


Mythologies

by Aproclivity



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: AU after 304 (I hope), Dark!Strand fic, F/M, He also has magic, Richard is behind everything, Strand is a creepy, god I can't believe i wrote this, possessive stalker, simon is the good guy, smut happens, unbetaed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 11:48:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12480876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aproclivity/pseuds/Aproclivity
Summary: Now however, Strand was Hades, feeding his Persephone with Black Tapes instead of pomegranate seeds. (This is a Dark!Strand fic.)





	1. Hades

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Wonderful_Jinx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wonderful_Jinx/gifts).



> So, I can't believe I wrote this but Jinx cheered me along so I did the thing. This is a Dark!Strand fic, and as such has those warnings for it. Strand is a creepy, possessive stalker who is behind everything. Also this is unbetaed because I wanted to get the first part up before 305. (OMG you guys, there's only two episodes left. Thank goodness we have such amazeballs writers in this fandom!)

Before there was the overarching veil of skepticism, Richard Strand had based his world in mythology. No, it wasn't the Sumatran mythology that his father preached on with its destructive goddess of salt water destroying everything in her path. Nor was it the local mythological history that surrounded him growing up in upstate New York. Instead what drew Richard to it was the balm of the familiar classical mythology of Ancient Greek gods with their being close to humanity and everything that went along with that. It was in those old stories dug from practically antique library books that Richard would find references for himself and the roles in the world that defined him. 

As a child, Richard knew he was Cassandra. Cursed by his father so that no one would ever believe the truth, Strand would watch in horror as the things he saw in his dreams happened one by one. His mother’s illness was the first thing that no one believed even though he could see her wasting away in front of him years before the testing caught it. There was his father’s becoming too involved in the shadows around him and needing to lose what remained of his family in the first place. But above all and always there were the shadow men that surrounded his family always watching and waiting for tragedy to come to pass so that they could slide their greedy fingers into those with his bloodline. 

After the boy in the river, Strand could no longer be Cassandra the watcher. Instead he became Icarus: flying too close to the sun his wings melted and he was dragged to the police station so that he could answer questions about Bobby’s body and how he knew where to find it. There was no keeping secrets from his father then. Following his removal from the police department Howard had beaten his son within an inch of his life. There was to be no more mention of this prophecy “bullshit” which of course is what Richard had already known his father would say. 

When he'd lost his wife, Strand had fancied himself as Orpheus moving out through the woods like a man with his lute trying to avoid looking back to see what tragedy lay in his wake. Even with his daughter darting along at his heels, Strand could see himself finding her and having all be forgiven and restored. But in the end, his Eurydice was the one who was unworthy of him and not the other way around. The myth was fine where as the wife that he'd been given was as substantial as the woman's ghost coming back through the underworld. In the end Coralee was nothing but a piece of paper--something human-like attempting to find humanity where none rested.

Now however, Strand was Hades, feeding his Persephone with Black Tapes instead of pomegranate seeds. His seeing her with flowers dropped at her feet had come in the form of those eleven calls in the sunshine, and in the intelligence that he’d gleamed when he’d first looked into her eyes and realized that she was only playing unintelligent in order to trick him into trusting her. It was a good lure, he’d realized then and it had made him moving forward with his plans so much easier, and indeed more _enjoyable_ than they otherwise might have been. Richard Strand didn’t believe in fate other than the one he was crafting with his own hands, but if he did, he might have thanked them for giving him his Alex. 

At the moment his Persephone was currently sleeping in the spare bedroom that she’d started using on those occasions when she’d spent too long at Strand’s house and the idea of driving home with her impaired vision was something that he’d deemed to dangerous. At first he’d needed to badger her into it, but now Alex slept there willingly. Tonight she’d given him a little smile before she trudged up the stairs, living her phone and recorder in the living room on the coffee table where she’d been working on the floor. Oh, there was every chance that she’d come down and retrieve it, but for now it just sat naked and waiting for the next thing the two of them discussed. 

Richard didn’t think that she’d be down to get it. Alex had been saying how her insomnia was so much better when he was around her. If only Alex had known why it was perhaps she would have gone running from this house, but then again she surprised him often. Her surprising him was part of the reason for his attachment to her; there were few people in his life that Richard Strand couldn’t predict, and he enjoyed the novelty of Alex’s doing it. Most of the time. He knew that she was asleep upstairs, without even needing to go and open the door. This was _his time_ , and here he didn’t need to remind her of that. 

For Strand and Alex, there was nothing so broad as seasons without one another. Instead, it was something that was much more binary. During the Day, Alex belonged to it. She was smiles and sunlight and the ever-present coffee cup in one hand as she led her small army of interns into battle on the research for their show. Alex was laughter, and a rolling of her eyes and a small ball of fury when he’d returned after she’d not seen him for three months while he attended to other business.

While she’d not seen him, he had seen her in the hours during which she tried to sleep. Her nights belonged to him and the shadows that he cast around her, all too tall and too frightening for her to consider during the day. But as he’d grown used to her intruding into his stoic sunlight hours, so she had done to his nocturnal period. It had taken time, but no longer did Alex fear the darkness. Now, Richard Strand was quite certain, she had grown to welcome pieces of it. If nothing else, she slept more freely than she had before, though her sleep was often interrupted. It was a side effect that he’d not intended when he’d broken into her apartment and placed the sacred geometry on the floor below the carpet under her bed. 

Simon Reese wasn’t the only one who had learned that trick young. Richard Strand knew it, and he used it for various reasons, but seeing Alex was the most important one. Of course Simon attempted to use his portal, but that wouldn’t be happening again. Simon Reese was the Hermes in their story, trying to bring Alex back to the sun. He could give her the Horn, he could arm her with truth, but it didn’t matter. Alex wouldn’t go to Turkey without him again, and with his wards, there was no way that Simon could find her here. At least not in the way that he was expecting to.

Eventually, Strand knew, Simon would come looking, and he would come wanting to take his Alex from this. When he did, the boy would regret it. He’d needed to interfere in Strand’s plans since he’d first heard of the podcast, and he’d given Alex the knife to cut the threads that bound her to Strand and the plans that he had for her. So far, Alex had reached back into the shadows rather than forward to the light, and he knew that she couldn’t help them now. Alex Reagan had invited the shadows in, and they’d never release their hold upon her. 

Drawn to her now, Strand padded down the long hallway of his father’s house. Placing Alex in the room next to his own had been too obvious, so Alex had found herself in what had once been the master bedroom. Richard felt no need to inform Alex of this; he’d removed his father’s protections long ago. Standing in front of the slightly open door, Richard peered in to see Alex silhouetted in the light that came from the open door to the bathroom. She wasn’t wearing something like she would be later in the form of nothing or silken pajamas, but she was wearing a worn PNWS shirt and a pair of sleeping shorts. At some point, Alex had kicked off the heavy quilt and was now just laying without a sheet. He kept this part of the house warm for a reason, but perhaps it was too hot for Alex. 

Leaving the door open, he moved towards her on the bed as she was sleeping. Slowly and calmly he reached over and brushed a lock of hair from her cheek back to behind her ear. He’d never touch her when she was asleep beyond that gesture. Yes, Richard Strand could be a monster, but he wasn’t so much of one that he wanted Alex to fear him. Well, anymore than she was frightened of the shadows in the night anyway. 

But Alex was good at surprising him, and that’s something that she did today. When he went to move away from touching her, Alex woke up, and she reached out to grab him with a quick and breathless “ _Richard_?” He’d wanted to hear her say his name like that, but this wasn’t the circumstance that he envisioned, and quickly his Strand persona moved over him and he cleared his throat with a practiced awkwardness. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up. I was about to go down to the kitchen for some tea when I heard you call out in your sleep. I was considering waking you but had decided against it. Sometimes we need to fight the things in our dreams so that they no longer affect our reality.” 

But Alex was still holding onto him, and he perched on the edge of the bed before reaching out and turning on the small lamp on the nightstand. In his experience, the lamp spilled out more shadows than light at time, and it gave the room an odd ambiance that somehow Strand felt was exactly perfect for this. His Persephone was pale, and there was fear in her eyes, and a fine sheen where she had been crying in her sleep but the tears were on the verge of being dry. It wasn’t that he found Alex to be beautiful when she cried, but he did find her to be the most beautiful when she let down her guard, and it was just her and him like this, even if she didn’t know that he was there with her to keep things away.

“I was having the weirdest dream.” Alex’s voice was soft and there was an urgency about it, it was her low middle of the night and nothing is fine voice. He’d heard it often enough both in person and when he’d gone back to listen to the podcast after she’d returned from Simon’s little errand in Turkey. Simon would pay for putting his Queen in check, Richard just didn’t know how he was going to do it yet. 

“We were in a house, and I think it was in Italy. We could see the monolith from the window. And I could hear the sea somehow, almost as if it was right next to the house. When you looked outside, you could see it rolling and black like there was a storm happening…” Alex’s voice went lower, and she curled closer to Strand, who was still holding her hand and sliding his thumb across the back of it to reassure her as much as he could. 

“But then there was a flash of lightening, and I saw it, Richard. _I saw it_. The house, the whole house had been covered in sacred geometry. It was everywhere. It was in the walls and the windows and the floor. And the symbols were the same but different. There was the double pentacle from Simon and Sebastian Torres but there was also a lot from the Horn of Tiamat. But when I opened the blue door, it was almost like the symbols had been written in the air. I could _see_ them, and they were like some sort of barrier that I couldn’t cross.” Her words came quicker, and she looked away from him for a moment, just staring down at the pillowcase that was below her head. 

“Simon was there, and he was trying to get me out of the house, but you were there too, Richard. You were there but it was like…” She almost tripped over the words and herself as she sat up to look more closely at him, moving so that she could look his eyes. “But you were tall. So much taller than now, and Richard… Your eyes were black. Just black like in some sort of horror movie, like ink had just filled them in and you said that you wouldn’t…” Alex shivered then, and she touched his cheek, to make sure that he was still there, and that he was still _himself_. “You scared me so much, Richard.” Her voice was little and it sounded a little lost as if he’d cut the rope that was holding her ship in harbor. 

“Alex, that’s never going to happen.” His voice was soft and reassuring, and he reached out and touched her cheek in return, now that permission had been given to him by her own. “I would never hurt you like that.” Other ways he would, and he knew that he had, but he’d never do whatever it was that Simon had shown her. Because of course it was Simon who had shown her the house in Cefalù which was where he’d spent a good portion of those three months with Charlie. The house wasn’t the only one that was there; it just happened to be the one for them. Charlie and her girlfriend had another house, and so did Ruby and there was a possibility of one for Coralee, if she learned her place within things. He wasn’t going to have her there if she upset Alex. His wife had made her opinions regarding Alex quite well known and more than once since she’d began communicating with him again. Of course, she didn’t know the full extent of things that he’d done, but Strand was starting to think that she’d had an inkling. The last he’d heard she was looking for Simon and it appeared that she’d found him given what the boy now knew about Sicily. 

“Alex,” Strand’s voice was a soft whisper as he looked into her eyes, still seeing the fear there of what he might become. “I need you to trust me, none of this is going to work if you don’t.” The words are a very real plea: none of this can happen if his Persephone cries and shrinks from his touch. He didn’t want the shadow of Alex that she’d become after finding Maddie Franks, he didn’t want the woman who recorded him without his permission. No, Strand wanted _his Alex_. This Alex who was looking up at him in an entirely unguarded way, almost like he was the sun that she always sought out when it burst through the Seattle weather. 

“I _do_ trust you, Richard.” Her voice was soft but there was a certainty in it that Strand knew would be lacking within her podcast itself. This was Alex without her shields up, and without her journalistic integrity to hide behind. This was his Alex, the face that she didn’t show to anyone else, and he was glad for it. His fingers brushed hair behind her ears again, and then some of her shields rose, and she gave a little embarrassed laugh. “God, I must look like a complete mess. I should put my glasses on.” 

“I think you look beautiful.” It’s a rare and entirely uncalculated moment of honesty, with him perched on the edge of his father’s bed. There’s a little note of wonder in it, and Strand is reminded of how many times he’d given his speech about the wonders of the universe, and he considers, not for the first time if Alex has any idea that he would consider her one of them. He keeps his voice low before he adds to what he said, watching her face fill with color in the low light. “I always think you look beautiful, Alex Reagan. I have since the first day that you walked into my office.” He could be honest and tell her this in his darkness, because it always hid a multitude of sins. 

And then Alex managed to shock him once more. He barely had time to react to her first movements before she was holding onto his face with one hand, and the back of his neck with the other. Her lips were frantic when they pressed to his own, almost as if she’d thought that this was some sort of dream and needed to test whether or not it was actually happening. He moaned softly into the kiss, before he shifted Alex back onto the bed and he was on top of her, losing himself into the kiss. Normally, Strand considered kissing as something perfunctory: it was something that was a necessary step that lead to other things. Never, not even with Coralee had been able to comprehend the stupid and romantic decree of kissing someone like they were a man drowning or in need of water. He understood that now. 

Strand kept kissing Alex, and she kept kissing him back as his hand moved along the line of her torso, and his kisses moved from her lips to the line of the neck that she too often covered in scarves. For some time he’d thought that she might have been seeing a lover and was hiding the evidence of that. But he knew that Alex hadn’t been with anyone else since Amalia, and that had been almost two years ago. No, Alex had been thinking of him, and he knew it. 

When he moved to her neck, and her collarbone, Strand could feel Alex’s hands carding through his hair and pressing close to her scalp. She moaned softly when he drew her skin into his mouth, and suckled on it softly, and then Richard gave an experimental bite to see how she would respond. He was rewarded with a hiss and a gentle swear, and a tightening of her hand in his hair as she canted her neck to one side so that he could have more access to it.  
But Alex’s hands weren’t idle. They caught the edge of his t-shirt and drew it upwards, and when it reached his head, Strand drew back so she could tug it off, and toss it over the side of the bed, and then lifted herself up so that her own shirt could meet his. When she was topless before him, Strand just stared down at her with her eyes gleaming. “You’re beautiful, Alex.” His voice was soft and full of full of reverence, as if he was a pilgrim and she was some sort of saint that he’d come across. Following his words, he traced his fingers over the soft skin of her sides, and let out that chuffing laughter when she wiggled away a little bit, biting her lip so that she didn’t release the giggle that was clearly on the verge of coming out. “Are you ticklish, Alex?” His voice was full of amusement before he leaned down and kissed her once again, his hand tangling in her hair while the other one rested on her hip. 

But one couldn’t live on kisses alone, and he drew back to catch his breath, and to allow Alex to catch her own, but Strand couldn’t be away from her for too long; instead he found her neck again, leaving little marks along the lower part of it where they would be easily covered by those damned scarves that she liked to wear. From the enthusiastic way that Alex responded, Strand could tell that she didn’t mind them in the slightest. 

Each sound that Alex made was like a symphony in his ears. Let Percival Black have his Mysterium; Strand had the sounds that he could coax from Alex Reagan in order to make up the actual music that created and bound the universe. Richard Strand didn’t believe in the faith that other people had, but he did believe in _her_ and he worshipped at the altar of her breasts, drawing them into his mouth eagerly, learning the difference that came when he curled his tongue around her nipple and when he scraped it gently with his teeth. 

While his mouth was busy, Strand’s fingers moved along the inside of her thighs, teasing them gently and feeling the softness of her skin there, each time they drew up, they pressed a little closer to the apex of her thighs. The cloth of her boxer shorts was moved aside, and he could feel the wetness there against the cotton. When his hand moved to the waistband, Strand could see that he had been wrong before: these were not a token of a former lover; these were entirely Alex’s that she’d purchased for herself. It was almost a relief to know that. The tips of his fingers pressed between the waistband and the softness of her stomach underneath, and he drew back from her for a moment. 

Strand’s blue eyes found Alex’s darker ones in the shadows, and he came closer to her face as her fingers slipped from his hair to his cheek once more. “Alex, are you sure that you want this? That it isn’t just because of the nightmare that you’d had? I’d never want to think of you regretting this.” He could wait, because there was a reason that there was an entirely cold function on a shower if he needed one. Already he could feel himself straining at his pajama pants, and his veins were racing with his desire for her, and with his need.

Her answer came in the form of a kiss, deeper and harder and more demanding than the ones that she’d given him before had been. Her tongue demanded entry inside of his mouth as she’d barged into all of the secrets that he’d wanted to keep from her, and he moaned softly into her mouth, giving her everything that he would have denied her outside of it. When she drew back, it was to whisper against his lips. “I want you, Richard. I need you. I’m not going to regret this.” Staring into her face again, Strand watched it as he slipped his fingers lower in her shorts, and then when he parted her folds and grazed his fingertips along her core. Her back arched to him, and her thighs spread even further apart as Alex tossed her head back into the pillow with a mewing little moan. 

In all of Strand’s fantasies, she’d never denied him, but he’d also never pictured her like this, so open from just a few kisses and his touch. It was beautiful, and _she_ was beautiful, he decided, as he kissed down her throat once more, his fingers working against her center softly, finding the perfect rhythm to make her whimper just right, and learning what to do to make her cry out. But then he couldn’t stop himself, and he kissed along her stomach, gathering the fabric of her silly shorts in his hands. Alex lifted instinctively, and he drew the fabric over her thighs and then down the rest of her legs, dropping them at the end of the bed before he pressed a kiss to the inside of her ankle. Another was pressed to her knee, and then he kissed along the inside of her thighs. 

His movements were slow, maddeningly so, especially for the rate at which his blood was moving through his veins. But he wanted to hear her reach her climax before he made love to her, he wanted to watch her, and see her and have her crying out his name before Strand lost himself in the feel of her, with her around him. 

Strand passed the apex of her thighs with almost regret before he moved upward and pressed kisses along her stomach once again, rolling his cheeks along the sensitive skin there so that she would feel the sharpness of his stubble. Alex giggled then, and she said his name inside of the sound and Richard found that he quite liked that as well. The sound was added to the litany of ways that she said his name, in the more favorable column of it, but it wasn’t enough. No, he wanted to hear her moan more vigorously. He wanted to hear her _scream_ it. Kisses moved lower, and Strand could deny himself no longer, and he traced his tongue along her folds slowly, pressing his lips to hers and sucking gently on first one and then the other before she hissed his name. 

Laughing softly at the renewed brush of her fingers in his hair, Strand delved deeper, sliding his tongue against her core, flicking it there. Delighting in the taste of her was easy, and he wanted more of it, so the flicks moved to gentle sucking on her core as Alex lifted her legs and rested them on his shoulders, her heels against his back. She was whimpering now, his name mingled with a progressively loud series of “oh god. Richard. Yes. Please, Richard. Please.” If he thought that the way she had sounded before was enough to unlock all of the secrets of the universe, it had nothing on how she sounded now, or the way that her hand pressed into his head and her hips lifted eagerly for each movement of his mouth. 

When she climaxed, it wasn’t a surprise, nor was the fact that she whimpered his name and then screamed it as her thighs clenched around him. Strand groaned against her, drawing out the sensation until she was practically vibrating with it. As her body went slack, Richard pulled away with regret, and kissed a line up her body to look into her face. 

Alex moved like she was going to reciprocate, and he stopped her by gently pushing her back on the bed with a kiss and a promise. “Later.” Another kiss followed before he asked: “can I fuck you, Alex?” If she was surprised by the vulgarity he used, she didn’t show it when she leaned up once more and kissed her response against his lips in the form of a single word: “please.” 

That was all Strand needed, and he pulled back from her with a quickness that probably belonged to a younger man when he shed the pajama pants he was wearing, and almost immediately was back between her thighs. Watching her as he entered her, Richard knew that the way Alex looked when he did was something that he would never forget. It was one of the more beautiful moments that he’d ever seen, and he leaned forward and kissed her then, before he started to thrust quickly, too filled with need to take his time. This would be the first of many times, he was certain and there would be time to savor this, but now he needed her too badly to take it slow. 

“My Alex,” he said the words quickly, repeated them to her lips, to her jaw, to the crook of her neck and to her collarbone, the two words mingling with kisses and his moans until he wasn’t sure where one left off and the next one began. Increasing his pace because he knew he couldn’t last long in her heat, Strand slid his hand between them to find the sensitive place that he’d spent so much time learning, and he stroked it in time with his thrusts. 

She was saying his name as he could feel her tightening around him, and his other hand tangled in her hair, pulling her head back so that he could look into her lust glazed eyes. “Are you mine, Alex?” It was a question he never would have posed to her if he’d been thinking of something other than this, but reason was very far from his mind and lost in his need, and lost with fulfilling all of the dreams in which this had happened. 

Alex didn’t disappoint him, because he knew that she wouldn’t. Her eyes found his own, and she quickly breathed, “I’m yours, Richard. I’m yours.” Her thighs wrapped around him, and Strand buried his face in her neck once more as he shouted her name as he climaxed inside of her. His fingers worked to draw her along with him not too long after, and he couldn’t help coupling the movement with a bite that would leave a mark in the crook of her neck, somewhere no one would see, but he would know marked her as his. 

With his breathing ragged, and feeling spent, he rolled of of her, tugging her close to him with one arm so that she was resting against his chest as Strand tried to find control of his breath once more. He could hear Alex doing the same, and her fingers moved over his chest slowly in nonsensical circles as she looked up at him with something not quite love, but close enough to him. For now at least. 

Quiet stretched out between them, as they sweated in the heated room in his bed, and then as their sweat started to chill, Alex spoke softly, because if there was one thing that his Alex could do in any situation, it was talk. Feeling, rather than seeing the heat in her face, Strand held his breath, hoping that what Alex was going to say next wasn’t a regret for what they had done. He was rewarded with her “Wow.” And then he laughed, because of course that’s what would come out of her mouth. 

Pressing his lips to her hairline, Strand expected that she wasn’t done, but he kept sliding his fingers up and down her spine, learning each bump of it and how her skin felt against him. “I can’t believe I…” She faltered and floundered for a moment. “I’m clean and I don’t have anything so don’t worry, but I can’t believe I didn’t mention a condom. That has honestly never happened before.” Alex’s cheeks burned all the harder for it, but Strand knew that Alex was the sort of woman for whom if she considered herself old enough for sex, then she needed to be grown up enough to talk about it. There was a surge of jealousy when she mentioned past lovers, but he knew that it had only been Amalia in the time they’d known one another, and he’d heard it from the lips of the woman herself. 

“I’m clean as well,” he responded soberly, before kissing her forehead as well. “And if you’re worried about the risk of pregnancy, don’t. When I was with Coralee, we attempted to have a child together, but…” He let the sentence hang off, and Alex looked up at him with the concerned expression that she only seemed to have for him, and gently she touched his face with an apology like he imagined that she’d wanted to do many times over the past two years. Clearing his throat, he continued. “I have an extremely low sperm count, so you don’t need to worry about that.”

And before Alex could ask him another question, he just yawned loudly and kissed the inside of her palm. Alex knew Strand well enough by now not to tell him that she was sorry for that, but he knew that she was anyway. That was one of the things about his Persephone; she had an empathy that seemed boundless. 

His yawn was answered with one of her own, as she readjusted herself and snuggled more firmly against him. Strand took advantage of the situation, and he traced his fingers along her back in more deliberate movements. It had been a long time that he’d thought about what he would do when he could touch her bare skin like this, and Strand took advantage of it. Sacred Geometry had many uses, and bilocation and portals were only one of them. 

Wordlessly, Strand traced a glyph of protection low on her back, warding her from harm. Another was added to assure any demonic forces that Alex belonged to someone important, and her sleep would no longer be troubled by it. He was halfway through the third when he heard Alex murmur against his skin, her breath warm. “What are you writing?” Sometime he hated how perceptive she was, and his fingers moved to nonsense patterns once again before he responded. 

“Just nonsense of course, but people often feel like little touches like this inspire…” In response to the lecture that he was certain Alex could feel building, she poked him against his side and he laughed before he finished the third glyph. 

“You know,” her voice was soft after he’d released the final spell. “I meant what I said before, Richard.” Her chin lifted and her palm broke the space between it and his chest so that she could look at him. “I really am yours. I have been for a long time.” He kissed her then, deeply and slowly, the kiss ardent but without urgency. 

“I know, Alex. And I’ve always been yours without knowing it until I met you. Now get some sleep. I’m here, and I’ll keep the nightmares away.” And Simon Reese too, just in case the boy got any brilliant ideas. 

The two of them had a week. A glorious week of Alex moving entirely into his bedroom and his bathroom, leaving some clothing there along with her shower things. It was brilliant, how the days and the nights merged together so that he was almost constantly with her. Each time they were together was just as ardent as the first, but in his bed save for one time in her office like he’d pictured so often. He’d had her on her desk, and the tie that she’d used to stifle her cries (a shame in and of itself, but a necessary one) still had smudges of her lipstick along the underside. 

Strand was half-hard and remembering that encounter in her office when he heard the front door slam, and angry stomping steps brought his Alex into his sanctuary, and he could already see that there was something wrong. Rising quickly, he looked to her, with her crimson face and flashing eyes and a stack of paper that she’d obviously already gone through. “What is it, Alex? What’s the matter?” 

“You son of a bitch.” Alex’s words were angry, and there was more than a little bit of betrayal and hurt mixed into them he could hear. Even when he’d disappeared for those months without a word, even when he baited her, he’d never seen her with her fury so unfurled. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you did this. I can’t believe I…” The sentence dropped off when she just stared at him for a moment, shaking her head. 

“Alex, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Sit down, let’s discuss this rationally…” 

“Rationally?” Alex’s voice rose in pitch when she threw down the first few pages in front of him. “ _Rationally_. Tell me, Dr. Strand, why do you have a file on me dating from three months before the first time I called you?” The papers were obviously a print out from his computer, and for a moment he just looked at them with a befuddled expression, but he could feel the anger rising in his chest too. 

This sort of anger was dangerous and Strand knew it. Knowing it however, didn’t make it any easier to tamp it down though, and he just stared at her over the paperwork. “Alex, you have to trust me, remember?” He tried in his best calm voice, trying to get her to focus on something else, but that didn’t mean that Strand didn’t eye the rest of the papers in her hands. “I’m sure that this was just someone attempting to force a rift between us. I’m sure Warren has what did you call them? Information specialists on his payroll that he could pay to spoof things like this. Clearly it isn’t real.” 

Angrily, another piece of paper landed on top of that, photos from before when he’d first met Alex, when her hair was longer. “I cut my hair just before I met you, Dr. Strand. These photos are from before you would have heard of me. Before I would have heard of you. But someone took them of me with a good telephoto lens or something.” Another piece, and another piece. Alex outside the studio, Alex at her favorite coffee shop, Alex at the italian place where they would go for lunch or dinner depending on the time that they’d been working. And perhaps most damning of all, Alex arriving in Chicago and outside the building where the Strand Institute was located. 

His mouth was dry when he attempted to use logic on her. “Photoshop, Alex. They have people who are masters in this sort of thing.” 

“It’s not photoshop. You had the files, Strand. There’s a clone of your desktop in there! Stop trying to make me think I’m crazy or having apophenia or whatever! I’m _not_.” 

“Alex, is it possible you’re misconstruing this? That you’re just….” 

Her response was to toss her second to last paper on his desk, and Richard knew what it was. It was a page from his journal. It was a page from his journal and she read it aloud, seemingly from memory. “ _Last night I made love to Alex for the first time. It was earlier than expected, but just as brilliant. My Alex surprised me by making the first move and kissing me. It was not as ideal as it could be, being as we were in my father’s bed, but the sigils there kept Alex the safest, and I’ll be certain to move her into my own room next time._ ” 

He was more furious than he’d ever been in his life, but it wasn’t with Alex, and Richard’s hands knotted into fists, but Alex was too angry to notice it. 

“Tell me again, Richard. Tell me how you haven’t been stalking me for three months before you pretended not to take my calls. Tell me how you didn’t plan all of this. Tell me how you didn’t feed me black tape after black tape so that I wouldn’t walk away from you. God, was this just all part of your plan? Did you fuck me just because you needed to have a way to hold onto me?” There were angry tears coming now, and Alex wasn’t someone who cried, but somehow she couldn’t stop them now. “I trusted you, Strand. I trusted you and I haven’t slept in two years and god damn it, I can’t believe I thought I…” She didn’t finish, instead she dropped the last piece of paper onto the desk. 

He only glanced at it, but it was enough to enrage him further. “You can’t be serious, Alex.” 

“I’m serious, Richard. I’m done. I’m done with your bullshit and your demons and I’m fucking done with you. I’m going to record one final episode with all of this new evidence, and then I’m done and I’m never going to think of you again. Goodbye, Doctor Strand.” Turning on her heel, Alex started to walk away from him, but she didn’t count on his grabbing onto her wrist. 

The grip on her wrist hurt, and Alex let out a loud yelp in response to it. “You’re not leaving me, Alex. _You’re mine._ You don’t get to leave.” 

“Let go of me, Strand. I don’t ever want to see you again!” She shouted by the end, as she tried to twist her wrist free. Strand’s grip tightened even more, and she whimpered for a second before she shouted again. “You’re hurting me! Let me go right now!” 

“You. Are. Not. Leaving.” Each word was ground out between his teeth as Alex twisted and tried to break free of his grasp. All of a sudden however, her struggling stopped, and instead his Alex just gave a horrified gasp. Richard didn’t need to ask her what had happened--he knew. His eyes had started to turn a shade of ink as the demon slipped from the back of his mind and into the front. 

Alex’s gasp turned to a scream as he gripped her more tightly, and she slapped him hard. Nothing changed, and he didn’t let go as she whimpered and hit him once again, this time with a punch. Before his eyes could change entirely, there was a banging at the front door and Richard wished that she’d been angry enough to slam the door to the room he was using as an office behind her. 

“Help me!” Alex screamed the words quickly, and she was slapping at him, twisting in his grip with a strength that he hadn’t known she’d possessed. The banging on the door turned into the sound of splintering wood, and his grip loosened the slightest bit for just a second. What happened next surprised him in a way that he’d never accounted for, and he felt a push from Alex that wasn’t physical. Instead the blow was a spell launched from raw power and desperation, and Strand tumbled back away from her, his fingers drawing weils in her arm as he fell. 

Alex took off running at that, and Strand sagged against the desk with an angry shout, and he could feel his power collecting at the back of his mind. “Alex you can’t leave me! You’re mine!” 

“No I’m not!” She screamed at him over her shoulder, and he could see the figure that had broken his door as he chased her into the hallway. It was Simon, of course it was _fucking Simon_ and he could feel the spell that the boy was calling even before Alex was there. 

“Come on, Alex! Come on!” Strand’s wards prevented him from entering the house, but he’d not thought to extend them beyond his doorframe. It was a mistake that Richard wouldn’t make again! He’d almost caught up with Alex when she looked over her shoulder at him, the fury and hurt in her eyes were inescapable, and with abandon, she threw herself into Simon’s portal, seeming not to care where it was that he was taking her. 

Richard Strand screamed then, and he released his building power in a wave, sending the fragments of the door out into the fading portal that Simon had closed. Whatever else, Richard was going to find his Persephone. Demeter wasn’t the only person who could turn the world to winter if she wanted to. Alex was his, and he wasn’t going to lose her and Simon Reese. Well, Simon Reese was going to pay for this.


	2. Persephone

“Alex!” I could hear Richa-- no, I could hear _Strand’s_ voice behind us, and it was sharper and angrier than I had ever heard before. Well, almost any time before. The last time I’d seen him he’d sounded like this. I ran faster, and looked to Simon who was trying his best not to drag me along as Strand’s shouts grew louder, and the sounds of underbrush cracking beneath his feet grew louder. “Alex!” He screamed again, and Simon tightened his grip around my fingers, pulling harder. I could feel the underbrush slamming against my legs, and I knew that when we stopped, I would be black and blue all over. If we stopped. We’d been running in one way or another for days. 

“Come on, Alex.” Simon’s voice was low and urgent on my left, and I tried to find something inside of me to go even faster. My lungs were screaming, and my muscles were pumping battery acid, and I could hear the sound of water somewhere in front of us. We were going to run out of space before we could get away, and that wasn’t going to help anything. Simon skidded to a stop in front of me, and I stopped just in time too. There was water below us, and there was no where that we could go that wouldn’t bring us right back into Strand’s path. When we stopped, I instinctively doubled up, trying to catch my breath, but it seemed impossible. All the running I had done before had saved me earlier, but now I didn’t know if I had anything left. 

We could hear Strand calling even closer now, and I cursed how much longer his legs were than mine, because what took me three steps took him one. Before it had been funny, when we’d walked anywhere together, but now… Now it scared me. Now Strand scared me and more than scaring me for me, I was scared for Simon. Simon stepped closer to me, turning me to look in his eyes. In his same urgent tone, he just spoke swiftly and softly: “Alex, you need to do it. If I do it he’s going to keep being able to track us. He knows what my portals feel like, and he can find them now but you…” I could hear it in his voice. Strand wouldn’t know where to look if I was the one to make the portal.

“But Simon,” I started to protest, ignoring the way that the world around us seemed a little bit darker, the way that the birds had all gone quiet. “What if…” He didn’t touch my shoulder, but almost, and I flinched when I could hear Strand even closer, it was almost like I was standing in front of him while he screamed. 

“You can do this, Alex. You’re going to save us and get us out of here. I know it.” He smiled then, and I took a deep breath once more, trying to remember all of the things that he’d taught me over the last week when we’d had a little bit of downtime. And it had been a little bit, Strand was never more than a few hours behind us, but the time until he caught us was getting smaller and smaller the longer the chase went on. Chewing on my lip, I dragged my nail across one of the scratches on my arm, ripping it off so that it would start to bleed again. Swallowing my hiss of pain, I collected some on my finger and just stared at the red for a second before I started to painstakingly draw the symbols that Simon had taught me. I closed my eyes, feeling _something_ building with each one, and my heart was racing so hard I could feel it in my ears growing louder when I finished each one and went onto the next in a circle. 

Finally, the last one was done, and I opened my eyes, watching the darkening sky before us start to spin and twitch, moving almost like a wipe effect in a movie. Shapes were distorted at first--just blobs and color but as I felt the something grow bigger, the turned into familiar trees and grass and rocks. I would know this place, but Strand didn’t and hopefully that would buy us some more time. Once I could see the wrinkles at the edge of the portal, I shoved Simon through. “Go!” I shouted, knowing that he wanted to protest. But Strand was right behind us now, and I didn’t think that he would hurt me, though the twinge in my wrist reminded me how wrong about that I might be. But Simon--Simon he would _kill_ if he got the chance, and I knew that instinctively. 

As soon as Simon was through the portal, I started to release the spell, and it started to close, making to move towards it, I could feel something grab at the heavy bag at my side. “Alex.” Richard’s voice still had the anger in it, but there was something else too. Relief, maybe, and if I didn’t know better I would say fear as well. Looking over my shoulder at him, I could see that his eyes, for now at least were blue. That was a good thing? Wasn’t it? And there was something in his eyes-- it almost seemed like a happiness that he’d found me again and an anger at his sense of betrayal. I couldn’t think about that now. If I thought about it, then I wouldn’t be able to keep moving forward. All I knew is that he was pulling hard and my time was running out for me to escape. Simon was on the other side, and he was reaching for me as I fumbled with the strap of my bag. The clasp that connected it to my bag itself was flimsy and I’d secured it with a heavy duty safety pin forever ago. Once I undid it, the force drove me forward and I fell through the portal, and I could see Richard fall backwards. There was some part of me that wanted to stop, and to make sure he was alright but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t do it not with everything. Once I was on the other side of the portal, I just closed it, and fell to my knees in my parent’s backyard. 

Simon stood in front of me, almost like a shield, as if he expected Strand to follow at any second. Trying to catch my breath felt like trying to swim in jello, and I couldn’t get a handle on it. I felt like I’d both run a marathon and not slept in a week. I’ve done both, but never all at once, and I couldn’t recall a time when I’d been so tired. It took me a minute to get onto my feet, and Simon decided then that it was time to talk. “We’re at your parents house, right? Your childhood home?” All I could do was nod, and look with longing towards the lights that were coming on inside the house. I knew what Simon was going to say before he said it. “Alex,” he kept his voice soft and even and gentle. “We can’t stay here, Strand…” 

“He knows I might come here. I know. I was just thinking of somewhere safe when I…” When I cast a possibly demonic portal. A probably demonic portal. At the very least I was using magic that I probably shouldn’t be doing, but that I could. It was still something that was hard to take in. All of this was something hard to take in, and without thinking about it, I traced my finger along my wrist, looking at how the purples and blues were fading to a green and yellow bracelet. I probably didn’t need the reminder, even though something inside me thought that I did. 

“We need to make another jump,” Simon said in that same calm tone he had, the one that reminded you that he knew something that you didn’t. Once, I would have called it enigmatic, but now that word was tainted, and I didn’t want to think about the man who I always connected with it. Not right now, not for the next ten seconds. I only got five before Simon spoke again. “Can you think of somewhere that Strand wouldn’t know about, or wouldn’t want to go to?” Leaning against the tree, I nodded. I knew a place that I didn’t think that he would ever go to again, and it wasn’t particularly a place that I wanted to go to either, but sometimes the best thing that you can do is hide in plain sight. 

Quickly, I started to assess what we had. Strand had gotten my bag that had my wallet, half the money that I’d drained from my savings and my credit cards, my driver’s license, my change of clothing, our food and water, my recorder and our first aid kit. Never have I been so glad for my mom buying me one of those pouches that you wear under your clothes, next to my skin I still had half the money and my passport and greencard. It wasn’t much, but hopefully it would be enough for right now. Thankfully, I was still bleeding and hadn’t noticed it running down my arm, which meant that I didn’t need to scratch myself to draw more blood. It was my blood that made the portal work, according to Simon, or rather something _inside_ of it, and while I believed that Simon believed that he was telling me the truth, it feels like there needs to be more to it than that. 

Taking a deep breath, I pressed my finger into the air again, tracing the same symbols but more slowly now that Strand wasn’t literally breathing down my neck. Still, I could see that hurt and betrayal mixed in with the anger, and I needed to stamp down something close to hope. It was too close to hope, and right now, it didn’t feel like there could be any hope left. Instead, I breathed into the spell, and opened my eyes to see the portal fluxing and shimmering around the edges, like a parking lot had somehow appeared in front of the tree I had fallen out of and broken my collarbone in when I was eight. When this was done, I was going to come home and visit. If… Well, there was always an if, wasn’t it? 

Stepping through the portal, I reached under my jacket and my shirt and I pulled out my passport and a couple hundred dollars in twenties. “Where are we?” Simon was next to me as I closed the portal and looked around. The place hadn’t changed since I’d first headed here three years ago, trying to paint a picture of what had happened in 1997. I never shared it on the show, but I had come to see where Coralee had vanished from. The gas station had changed, and there was a diner and a small motorway sort of hotel there now. 

“Big Sur.” I said it softly as I readjusted everything, and then shoved my hands in the pocket of my jacket. First chance I got, I was buying a new one that wasn’t _red_. But for now, I was bone tired and sore, and bleeding. I dragged my fingers over my dirty jeans and then nodded towards the front of the place. “Come on. I’m not camping tonight. I can’t.” Camping made me think of Nic, and I wonder what Strand had told him, if anything at all. After I’d left his father’s house, I’d gone to mine and left my phone there so no one could track it. I knew better than anyone just how convincing Richard Strand could be, and the last thing I wanted was for him to convince Nic to get MK to start tracking me. 

Nic was going to kill me, if Strand didn’t do it first. 

It took a bit of convincing, paying twice what the room cost, and letting her hold onto my grandmother’s watch as collateral, but the woman let us rent a double room for the night just using my passport and cash. We stopped at the diner and took our food togo, not wanting to sit around where we couldn’t escape from if we didn’t need to. I’m actually amazed at how much Simon could eat, really. It reminded me of Nic when we were kids, and I wondered where both of them could put it all. I left him to watch TV before I showered, and rinsed out my clothes and hung them up. 

Claiming one of the beds in my t-shirt, I just went to sleep. Like the rest of this week, my nightmares didn’t have demons or hags or cats in them anymore. Instead it was just Richard and I in his father’s living room, with his eyes turning black as he held onto my wrist and we screamed at one another. It was a memory, but somehow it kept becoming worse and worse the more times it happened. Each time, Strand’s face changed more and more, so that there was malice in it and not just the anger. I didn’t think at the time he wanted to hurt me that badly, but I’d been so wrong about him before; what if I was wrong about this too? Just the thought made my chest tight, because honestly, I didn’t know what to do with it, or what I could do with it. All I could do was watch the scene replay over and over until I passed out of dreams and into just unconsciousness, practically still hearing Richard whisper my name pleadingly. 

For the first time in a long time, when I woke up I didn’t feel as if I’d fought some sort of battle in my dreams, and a quick look at the clock told me that I’d been asleep for twelve hours. Simon was awake, and watching TV still, and I just groaned and rolled over again before my body forced me out of bed and into the bathroom. When I came out, finger combing my hair, there was a knock at the door and I froze, and so did Simon. Quickly I jutted my chin towards the bathroom. If it was Richard, he wouldn’t knock and Simon was still wanted for escaping from Three Rivers. If need be, he could escape from there, and no one would even know that he was here with me. Hopefully, anyway. 

But when I opened the door, it was just a teenager standing there. He looked to be about fifteen or so, that strange time when you’re about to have a growth spurt but haven’t quite hit it yet. More than that, the kid looked… scared. Almost like he’d seen a ghost. In front of him, he was holding out a note that had my name on it. The handwriting was entirely Nic, all sharp and jagged, but the paper of the envelope was something that I was familiar with too: it was from Strand’s office at his father’s house. I didn’t want to take it from the kid, but he pressed it into my hand, and swung my repaired bag off his shoulder before he started to turn away.

“Wait!” The word came quickly, and I followed him barefoot out into the parking lot. “Who gave you this to give to me?” I wanted to grab the kid and shake him, but I needed to be calm. The kid was already spooked, and two spooked people is a disaster waiting to happen. Not that I had any experience with that or anything. “It’s okay, I’m not angry with you or anything.” 

The kid twitched, and he looked at me as if I was crazy. “I ain’t scared of _you_ lady!” He looked almost insulted that I thought that he might be. “The dude who gave it to me, he was scary! Older white guy, blue eyes. He was pissed off, and he acted as if I was nothing. And one second he was there, and then the next he was gone okay? He watched me give it to you, and then he was gone.” He felt then in his pockets, and he pulled out the hundred dollar bill as if to make sure it was still there. “Look, I don’t know why he didn’t give it to you himself, but…” 

I just turned away from the kid, a feeling of just this giant dread coming over me and I remembered Simon in a cold terror. I practically ran back to the hotel room with its open door and I slammed it shut behind me, not caring if Strand was out there watching still. “Simon!” I tried to keep the panic out of my voice, but I couldn’t do much with it. “Simon!” I called again, and he threw open the bathroom door, quickly. 

“I’m here, Alex.” Those three words made me breathe a little easier, and I turned to look at the now crumpled up note in my hand. I moved to sit on the bed, and Simon sat near me as I opened up the note. It wasn’t very long, but what it said made my chest seized up in a way that normally it only did when I woke up from having my nightmares. More than ever, I hoped that this was one, but looking down at the bruise on my wrist and the scratches on my arms, I knew that it couldn’t be. 

_Alex, I’m okay. Strand says to meet us at the cabin where Sebastian Torres was found. Three o’clock. Come alone._ He didn’t sign it, because he didn’t need to. “Oh my _god_!” My voice was sharp when Simon took the letter away from me, and he didn’t say anything for a long minute. Neither of us did. I think that we were both in a state of shock. I had never thought that Strand would have involved anyone else in this. Never. “He was here,” I said quickly. “And now he has Nic.” 

“Alex,” Simon was trying to keep his voice soft as he looked at me with that odd intensity in his eyes. “You can’t go. You can’t do it.” 

“I _have_ to go. I can’t leave Nic to him, and we can’t keep running like this. It was stupid of me to think that we could.” Simon looked at me in a weird way then, and when I touched my cheeks, I realized I was crying. I’m not normally someone who cries, but as soon as I realized it, I found myself sobbing. I cried for Nic, and I cried for Simon. I cried for Amalia and I cried for Charlie. I cried for Keith Dabbage and Maddie Franks and Sebastian Torres and Katie Yi. But most of all, I cried for myself. I cried because the man that I love wasn’t the person who I thought he was, and because now I was in danger, and now he was hurting my friends because of me. 

I don’t know how long I cried for. I cried so long that my tears turned angry, and my throat started to hurt from it. I just felt wrung out, and like any of the sleep that I had gotten the night before might as well have not happened. Then Simon did something entirely unexpected: he reached around to hug me. He hugged me and I yelped in pain when he touched my left shoulder. It almost felt like it had suddenly just been hit with an iron or something. But it burned, and I hissed again, unable to stop what came out of my mouth. “ _What the fuck?_ ” 

Simon’s serious face came again, and he looked at me intently before he asked: “has Strand been around bare skin on your back.” I could feel the heat in my face almost match the fading heat in my shoulder now that he wasn’t touching it. Carefully, he rolled up my shirt so that he wasn’t touching my skin, and then whatever he saw there made him curse too. 

“Alex don’t panic.” Those words alone make it ten times more likely for a person to panic, actually. “But I think Strand put a tracker spell on you. A big one.” 

“He did what?” I was livid now, furious even, and I reached over to touch it. I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel the geometry that made up the spell with the different senses I was slowly developing. But I couldn’t help remembering how I laid against Richard’s chest and thought that he was drawing nonsense against my skin. But no, even when we’d just had sex, he was still planning on doing something so that he could always find me. “That motherfucker. I can’t believe… After _everything else_!” I wanted to punch something. No, I wanted to punch Strand for all the times that I couldn’t because of the podcast. I wanted to punish him.

“There’s no way I’m not going now. What’s the point if he can just find me wherever the hell I go? ‘ _We need to trust one another, Alex._ ” I said quickly, using the impersonation that I used when I was in the studio with Nic. “And all that time, he was planning to just…” I didn’t know what. I still didn’t know what my role in all of this was, but he knew me as much as I hated it. He knew me, and he knew that I’d never let someone else take my place. Especially not someone who I loved like he was my brother. “Simon, you should go. You should just keep running so he can’t find you. If you’re not with me then you’re probably safer.” 

“Alex,” Simon’s voice was soft, and he took my hand. “I’m not going to leave you to face this alone.” 

“If you come, he’ll hurt Nic. And he might hurt you, I’m not going to have that. It’s better that I just go.” 

“He knows you, Alex. He _knows_ you, and he knows that you’ll do this, he’s counting on it. He won’t kill Nic, because he knows if he does then he’ll lose you forever. He doesn’t want to lose you, Alex. Whatever else, you are important to him, otherwise he wouldn’t have worked so hard to keep you...close.” I wanted to find the truth in his words, but right now, when I think of Strand all I can think of is the black in his blue eyes, and how hard he held onto my wrist when I wanted to leave. 

“He could hurt Nic, though. He could hurt you. He would see it as a means to an end, and I don’t want that for either of you. So this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to check out of the hotel, and then we’re going to go over to the diner for breakfast. Because if he kills me, or it’s the end of the world, I’m doing it with a belly full of coffee, bacon and chocolate chip pancakes.” 

Simon looked at me like I was crazy when I stood up and went into the bathroom with my bag. I didn’t expect he’d done anything but fix the strap like he’d been offering to do for a while. I washed my face, put on some makeup to cover the circles under my eyes, and changed into the clean clothes that were inside. Nothing was weird about my bag, but I guess when you have someone’s brand on your shoulder, I guess they really don’t have to put a tracker or whatever it is in all the junk at the bottom of my bag. 

I know it’s weird that I didn’t ask Simon about removing the mark, and that he didn’t offer to do it, but we both knew that if the person who put the mark on you wasn’t the one who took it off it would only end in death: yours or theirs. It was one of the reasons that Simon had killed his mother, so that the mark would be gone from him. Putting the mark on the children was always the first step, and now Strand had done it to me. While we were in bed together. I wish I was the sort of person who could kill someone, because he’d deserve it for that! It also explains why it reacted with Simon: his magic didn’t work with Strand’s and whatever else, Simon definitely does have powers that you can feel when he’s touching you. 

Before I came out of the bathroom, though, I took the money out of the pouch where I was keeping it with my passport, and I took the rest of it out of my purse. We’d started with ten grand that I’d removed telling people it was for a story. We still had eight, and when I came out of the bathroom, I handed it to Simon. 

Well, tried to hand it to him anyway. He held his hands up and shook his head. “I don’t need your money, Alex.” He said it quickly and firmly. “You should hold onto it.” 

“What’s the point of keeping running when he can be here in the next second, Simon? He could have come in here if he’d really wanted to. I know you warded the room or whatever, but Richard could have. Hell, he was right outside the door when he gave this kid my bag and the note. He could have grabbed me when I went out to talk the kid. He knew I would have done it, because that’s me and what I do. He’s spent the last two years manipulating the shit out of me, and I’m not going to let him do it anymore. I’m going to go see him, and I’m going to tell him to leave me the fuck alone!” Simon flinched at the swearing, but I couldn’t apologize; I was too angry for it. All I could do was to shake my head. 

“Come on, I want my grandmother’s watch back, and I need an entire Starbuck’s worth of coffee.” 

“I don’t think you’ll find that here. We can go somewhere else…” 

“No. No more portals for me until the one for Nic. Diner coffee is supposed to keep truck driver’s going. I’m sure it’ll work for me.” I smiled at Simon, but I was still on edge. It was impossible not to be on edge. In the end, I went and got my watch and used my charge card to pay for another night. Nic wasn’t looking, but MK might be. I used the phone in the room to call into the studio so that they didn’t send out a search party. But it would be easier to use the room for the portal than for us to do it outside somewhere. I was really getting sick of trees, honestly, and I was about to go back where it all started. The night before the trip to the cabin was the last time that my dreams were normal, and it felt like ages ago now. At this point, I didn’t think that I was ever going to be able to sleep again. 

But we could eat. We ate like we were starving, and it’s easy to forget sometimes that with everything Simon has seen and done he’s still a kid. He’s still twenty and he looks younger and he never got the chance to be a kid because of the people like Strand. If we got out of this, we were going to do something dumb and normal, I decided. Disneyland or whatever. Just a place where he can be a kid who doesn’t need to worry about demons or portals or sacred geometry. Or, you know, the end of the world. 

Heading back to the room, I hugged him again, ignoring the pain that it caused me. I honestly hoped that Strand could feel it. I hoped that it was burning him just as much as it was burning me. It was probably petty, but I didn’t care. I was… I _am_ too angry to not be petty at the moment, and I deserve that. More than that, Strand deserves it too. 

While I was gathering up my stuff, Simon went into the bathroom. I didn’t think anything of it until I felt the collection of magic happening, and then I screamed at him. “Simon no!” I knew where he was going. Simon Reese had always thought that he needed to protect me in his creepy little way, and I also knew that Strand was going to kill him if he showed up at the cabin, either way, but it was definitely more likely that he was going to do it if I wasn’t there to try and stop him. Gathering up the rest of the things in my bag as quickly as I could, I dragged my nail across the same scab once more, and I knew that it was going to be a scar. Honestly? I was glad for it, I was glad to have a physical scar to go along with all of the mental ones that these last years had left on me. 

When I arrived at the cabin, it somehow looked worse than it had the last time I had seen it. There were streamers of police tape around it as I ran inside the open door, because I could see a figure bound in a chair on the floor and I could heard the sounds of a struggle. Richard’s voice was as cold and angry and as sharp as it had been when he was holding onto me, and he had Simon against the wall by his neck, and was shaking him like a dog does to break the spine of his prey. “Are you sleeping with her?” He asked, each word accented with another shake. 

The coldness in his voice and the color in Simon’s face was so dark that it scared the hell out of me, so all I could do was run in. “Richard stop!” I screamed the words at him, and then skidded to a stop three feet away from him. “I’m not sleeping with him! He’s my _brother_!”


	3. Counterpoint: Hades and Persephone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally getting some answers, Richard Strand is not a nice dude and Alex Reagan does not have enough of a sense of self preservation.

Richard turned to look at me, and he dragged Simon along with him, still holding onto him by the back of his collar. I watched Simon instead of Strand, and he was breathing, at least, the color pinking back into his cheeks. “Your brother.” There was that laugh that I used to love drawing out of him, and now it just scared the hell out of me. “What are you talking about, Alex?” Strand demanded of me, and I took another step forward while he stood still.

“You had all those files on me, all those notes and yet you never once thought to go back to my childhood? I was adopted when I was six, Richard. Not up to your normal standards there, Dr. Strand.” He huffed angrily at me and I ignored it as I stood between him and in front of Nic, but my eyes remained locked with Strand’s the entire time. “Nic, are you okay, did he hurt you?”

“I’m fine, Alex. He just showed up into my office and knocked me out somehow. I know it sounds crazy, but I think he used some sort of--” 

“Powers on you. I know.” I waved my hand back at Nic, trusting that he was telling me the truth before I went on. “Richard Strand is the Adversary.” Strand then inclined his head slightly and gave me the little upturn of his lips that he gave me when I was figuring something out and was on the right track. I used to love that look, and I had understood how he was still considered a good teacher even despite how much of an asshole he could be. But now it just made me angrier, and I drew my arms around me a bit more so I didn’t step forward and punch him. 

Strand’s arm was still around Simon’s neck, but he was letting him breathe, at least for the moment and I could see Simon’s eyes and I knew he was pleading for me to run. I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave he and Nic to Strand. More than that, at this point I didn’t think I could leave the _world_ to Strand. Besides, it didn’t matter; wherever I ran on it he would be able to find me. I wasn’t going to run anymore. 

“Please, Alex,” he began in that snide lecturing tone that he knew wrangled me, and I just narrowed my eyes at him and shook my head. 

“You don’t get to talk yet, Richard. I’m talking and for the first time, I want you to be honestly and completely truthful. I swear to god if you lie to me, you will never see me again.” I knew of one sure way to make that happen, and I was deadly serious about that. Richard knew it, and I could see the concern and worry in his eyes when he made a curt nod. “Swear to tell me the truth. Swear on something that _matters_ , Richard.” I expected that he would say Charlie. 

I definitely didn’t expect the answer that came from his lips. “I swear on _you_ , Alex.” I needed to bite on my lip not to even smile a little bit at that, and I could feel something like a little bubble of hope in my gut. Maybe he wasn’t totally gone after all. And maybe I wasn’t totally wrong about him. I really wanted _not_ to be right that he was just this monster who…

I needed to stop, and to think, so I started with a softball question. Well, as much of a softball question that I could with him holding onto my brother, and with Nic tied to a chair on the floor. “You’re the one who sent Amalia the Unsound from my personal email, aren’t you? One of the times when you were in my office while I was out getting coffee or something?”  
For a moment, Strand looked like he was going to protest the question before he just sighed the answer like it was beneath him, like he does when I should know something already. “Yes.” 

I had known it, once it had come out what he’d done, but I hadn’t wanted to believe that he would undermine one of the most important relationships in my life at that time. But I knew he’d done worse. “You went to Nic and Paul and Terry and you told them that I was behaving erratically even before I actually was, didn’t you?” There was a little tremor in my voice and even I couldn’t tell if it was anger or if it was hurt. Maybe it was both, though I was really hoping that I’d gotten over the hurt before now. Maybe it was just the hearing it, and knowing that he’d done what I never would have expected him to do was enough to bring it all up again.

“Alex…” He began with that same sigh. “It doesn’t change anything.” 

“It does to me!” I protested. “Admit that you did it, Richard. Admit that you tried to destroy every relationship in my life other than you so that in the end you were the only person I had left!” I was shouting at the end of it. “Even before Maddie Franks. Even before I recorded you, you were acting like I was being irrational. Maybe I was, but never to the level that you wanted me to think I was. You were gaslighting me.” 

“Alex, it was never my intention to gaslight you. But yes, I suppose I….” He dropped his voice lower and he sighed, and his grip on Simon slackened for a moment. “Yes, I wanted your full attention.” 

I raised my hand to cut him off there, and then I focused on another thing that was connected in it’s own way. “When I started having the nightmares. The ones before Maddie, I mean. They started right after here. Was that when you broke into my apartment and put that _thing_ under the rug under my bed? Did it cause it?” 

“It was not my intention to cause you nightmares when I did it, Alex. I wanted to be able to keep you safe. What I saw here….” He paused for a moment, as if to consider his words. Strand was always good with putting more than a little grain of truth in his lies and vise-versa.

The laugh inside me bubbled out before I could stop it. “And you were jealous of Tanis Braum. I knew that even that day when you were so cross about me going into the woods with him.” 

“That charlatan…” Strand began angrily, and I just stared him down for a moment. “Yes, I was jealous. Does it make you happy to hear it, Alex? I was jealous of him and the attention that you gave him like he was somehow equal to the attention that I deserved…” 

My anger matched his own when I cut him off. “No, Richard if you got the attention you deserved right now I would have gone to the police and let them come and save Nic. Simon only came because I was coming, and you knew I would because I’d never allow someone to get hurt because of me. It’s already happened too much…” Strand looked like he was going to say something, and if he did, I was going to lose it either with anger or with tears, and I couldn’t. So I focused on something else that made me livid. “All those times that I was half-awake and saw you in the shadows of my room, were you there?”

“I…” He seemed to stumble for the words before he spoke and I was reminded of all the times that he’d opened up to me and I hated it. That wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want my Richard, _that_ Richard. I wanted Strand who could be far more objective than I could be. I needed that, because if he was Richard, it was harder to sustain the level of fury that I needed to with him. I could see Simon willing me to leave, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do that to him and Nic. Let Strand be furious with me not them. “Yes, I was there.” 

I hated how there was a waiver in my voice at my next question, and I couldn’t tell if the temperature in the cabin was dropping or if it was my anger. “Those times that I dreamed that you and I were… That we…” God, it was so stupid that I couldn’t find the words and that I could feel my cheeks growing hot. “Did you have sex with me with me thinking that it was a dream?” By the end of the question, my voice dropped into a little whisper because honestly that was almost what I wanted to not be real the most. I didn’t know what I’d do if he’d had sex with me without my consent. 

“ _No Alex!_ ” The words were immediate and shocked and angry, and he let go of Simon for a moment to walk closer to me. “I would never do that to you. I don’t want you unwilling, Alex. I would never rape you simply because I was there. I want you, not the you that you are in the middle of the night and frightened. The first time you kissed me, that was the first time that I ever touched more than your cheek. I swear, Alex.” 

Relief flooded over me, because at least there was some lines that he wouldn’t cross. Not many it seemed, but there was _something_ at least. In all the movies I’d seen the good girl had always been able to bring the bad boy back to the light side, and I was ashamed to admit that I was starting to think that maybe I could. That maybe, just maybe the real Richard was in there somewhere and I could pull him back from whatever abyss he was staring into. It was stupid, and I was being stupid and if I were anyone else I’d want to shake myself, but there I was taking a step closer to him. 

“When you put the tracker on me, Richard, what else did you do. You were touching me more than just…” I didn’t finish it, but I touched my shoulder for a second so that he knew what I meant. 

“I only put the tracker on you, Alex because I didn’t want to lose you like…” 

“Like you lost Coralee, I know. I mean. I get it. I hate it. I hate that you did it to me, but I get your reasoning for it. But what else did you put on me?”

He sighed for a moment, and he pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “I placed a sigil for protection on your lower back. What ever else you think of me Alex, I _do_ care for you. Deeply. After you found the housekeeper, I strengthened what I’d placed in your home, and then I’d done the same to the office because you were spending so much time there and whatever hotels we were at I warded as well.” He paused and then he continued in that lower secret voice he had, and I wanted to slap him for it. “I told you before, after Coralee rescued us that when I lost her it felt like I’d lost any good that I’d had in my life. My feelings for you dwarf my feelings for her. For anyone other than Charlie. I _cannot_ lose you, Alex. That’s why I placed the third sigil on you. The sigil informs any other demon that you are not to be touched. For any reason.” 

I could feel the flush draining from my face then. “Is that something that I really need to worry about? Actual demons…” 

“Alex…” Strand just sighed for a moment. “I’m getting tired of answering your questions without asking some of my own…” Because of course he did. And of course he’d been around me too long because he’d started speaking in my pauses. I would have thought it hilarious before, but now it just worried me. Everything worried me because there was a rather large question in my mind that I couldn’t ask. If I asked it, then it would be like admitting that I was losing my mind even with everything else that was going on. 

“One more question then, Strand. Just one.” And not that one, but one that was maybe even more important. “Why me. Why out of the six billion people on this planet did you have to chose me?” I hated how my voice broke at the end of the question, I hated how I couldn’t even look at him when I asked it, and I really hated how I needed to ask it at all. I’d wanted to be Ira Glass, and now here I was like the idiot heroine in some sort of weird demonic lifetime movie. I just really wanted to know why all of this came down to me and this stupid podcast idea of Nic’s. 

I was going to need to hit him for this. Really hard. 

When I raised my eyes to Strand’s again, he was holding out his hand to me. “I refuse to answer anything else in public, Alex. If you want to know why then I’ll tell you. But not here. Someplace private.” 

“Alex don’t even think about it.” Nic was giving me _that_ voice, the one he did when he thought I was losing my mind and about to do something really stupid. He was doing it because he knew me and I was about too. Simon was shaking his head so violently I was worried that he was going to hurt himself in Richard’s grip as I just stared at how normal Strand’s hand looked in the little bit of sunlight that had looked like a cross before. Now it almost looked more like a spotlight. 

“Some place neutral. Some place where I can leave if I want. And I swear if you don’t do it, I will never trust you again, Richard. Not as long as I live.” 

He didn’t hesitate before he said, “I swear.” 

“Alex!” This time it was Simon, who was rapidly shaking his head and fighting Strand’s grasp. I could feel him drawing his… whatever. 

“Simon.” I didn’t remove my eyes from Strand’s. “This is my choice. I’m trusting you to get Nic someplace safe and then go. Don’t come back for me. Just get someplace safe.” 

“Alex, you can’t…” Strand’s grasp grew tighter, and Simon’s voice grew strangled. 

“Let my brother down.” It was an order, and I didn’t make it seem like anything else, but Strand dropped Simon as I stepped forward and took his hand. Then the world around us dissolved and we were someplace else. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alex wished to go some place neutral, so Richard bought her to the most neutral place he could think of. When the two of them arrived, they were on a deserted beach, and the tide was in, but the benches were far enough away that it made a pleasant view. There was no one around as the wind whipped through here which was the reason that Strand had chosen it. For a moment, Alex just stared at him before she moved to rest her hands on the low rock wall in front of the bench and she asked softly almost like this was normal for her now. “Where are we?” 

“A beach about fifty minutes outside of Seattle. I come here from time to time when I need to get away from my father’s house. When I need to clear my head. As you can see, there’s nothing keeping you here.” His voice was soft as he watched her, and she almost seemed to relax just a bit. Someone who hadn’t known her well might not have caught the little movement of her shoulders, but Strand knew her very well indeed. He most certainly knew her well enough to know that he wasn’t going to particularly like what came from her mouth next. 

“Nothing but answers, Richard. It’s why I came. Hell. It’s why I called you so many times before.” There was the ghost of a smile on her lips when Strand came to stand next to her and to look out onto the gray waves. The entire world felt gray today, and he was glad of it. It made sense that the only color in it was the crimson of the old coat that she wore. But the ghost of the smile vanished as quickly as it came, and Strand needed to stifle a sigh when she added in a softer tone. “At least I thought it was.”

“Alex.” Richard caught her by the arm and turned her to look at him, holding her chin so that she couldn’t turn it away. He knew the grip was too tight by the way that she winced, but he couldn’t release it. Not yet, not until she understood. “Yes, I had the file on you. But what Simon didn’t give you was the file that I had on everyone else involved in PNWS. You, Nic, Paul, Terry, some of the other reporters that had worked there over the years. I knew that’s where the Mysterium needed to be played, and I knew that one of you was going to be involved, but I didn’t know it would be you. In fact I would have preferred that it had been Nic who had taken the idea that he’d been given on interesting jobs. He would have been far easier to manipulate given how much of an idiot he could be.” 

There was that specter of a smile on her face again before she lowered her eyes and tried to pull away, but he didn’t let her not yet. “But you didn’t give up. And then when you came to my office…” He paused for a moment almost remembering the sensation that he’d had when she walked in and the way that there was that momentary sensation like he’d been dropped from a great height when she’d smiled at him. “I told you that I’d found you beautiful from the moment I first saw you there and that was the truth, Alex.” He was still speaking softly, and Alex stopped fighting to stare into his eyes as he did it. “At first it was something that was easy to brush off but then you discovered what you called the black tapes on your first visit and I realized that you had just been playing dumb to get me to trust you. I could see you then for what you were, and what you could be.” 

Strand’s hand slipped from her chin to her cheek, softly stroking the place that he’d stroked so many times when she’d been asleep and how he’d marveled at the way that his hand was just the right size to cup her cheek. He’d not realized it that first time that he’d seen her, but Alex was meant to be his; she fit him exactly right in every way and it would only be a matter of time before Alex realized it too. She was his by every definition that counted, and by a great many that she wasn’t even aware of yet. 

When Alex pulled away from him, Strand could feel his body tense and tighten and he was ready to pounce upon her if he needed to like the predator that she was rapidly turning him into by doing stupid things like running from him. If Alex wanted him to chase her then she would, but the only distance that she took from him was to sit on the bench, and Richard noticed that she was shivering, and her arms were wrapped tightly around herself. Shrugging off his jacket, he wrapped it around her shoulders before he moved to sit next to her. 

“Your body is going to run colder now. The power within you burns up too much energy for it not too. Now that you’ve accessed it, you’re going to need to be more aware of it and compensate for it accordingly. No more skipping meals or getting not enough sleep. Power doesn’t care about your own personal well being. It will always prioritize itself over you.” 

Wide-eyed, Alex turned to look at him, the same look she’d given him many times along their journey together when she was attempting to decide if he was telling her the truth or a lie. “Did you know that I could do what I did? What I can do now?”

“I knew that you had the potential for it, nearly everyone does if they are given the right teacher. I had thought perhaps with time I might…” He sighed for a moment. “I thought that I might have been the right teacher for you after I’d given you the better skills to handle it. If I had known that you’d already had that particular part of yourself unlocked then I might have handled some things differently.” He was being truthful, and he’d pictured the delight on her face many times in the house in Italy, but only once she was forearmed with the knowledge that she needed to protect herself from what it can open the person up too. “It appears I needn't have worried. Whoever opened the door for you had already sealed your potential in a different way. You said that Simon is your brother…?” The question was a prompt, despite the questions that he could see in her eyes. Alex was always questions and as ever that both delighted him and drove him mad. 

But she did sigh and answer. “I was adopted when I was six, I told you that. But I was found in Vancouver and didn’t have any memory who I was. My mom worked as a police dispatcher at the time on nights and the cop who brought me in just kind of dropped me off with her. I latched on and wouldn’t let go and I’ve been with her and my dad ever since. I had therapy and everything when I was a kid but I didn’t remember anything about my life before then until you wouldn’t let go of my arm and I…”

“Used your power for the first time. So whoever opened the door for you, to use Simon’s terminology, they bound your memories.” 

“No. Simon and I share a father. He tried to do to me what he did to Simon but my biological mother, she was the one who bound my memories and whatever this was so that he couldn’t do to me whatever he wanted to. She wanted to hide me, I guess. And before you ask, yes he is my biological father. Simon took my toothbrush and had the lab run the test. I got the results myself.” 

“You mean when he was stalking you, he stole your toothbrush and you believe him?” There was that anger in Strand, and he didn’t buy what Simon had told her for a minute. 

And of course Alex responded to the anger in his voice with matching anger in her own. “You don’t ever get to talk about stalking someone, Richard! You stalked me for three months before we even met, and then you broke into my apartment to watch me sleep and then you put a tracker on me so I couldn’t vanish like your wife. None of that constitutes healthy behavior!” Alex stood up then, and she walked over to the wall and placed her hands on it angrily, and Strand watched her shoulders for a moment before she pulled his coat around her again. 

It was a long moment before she spoke again, and Richard just watched her, not breaking the silence despite feeling the seething anger that Simon Reese had stolen a part of Alex that he’d not even known that she possessed. “I remember him.” Her voice was quiet, and she turned around to face him, her hands still wrapped up around her. Alex was the sort of woman who very rarely cried, and he knew it, but there was something deeply alluring to her as there was the glistening of unfallen tears in her eyes. More than a little part of him wanted to press and to push and to see the tears fall down her cheeks so that he could take them inside of himself along with the flavor of the salt on her skin and the anger and sadness that she was giving off in waves. 

Alex Reagan was truly beautiful when she cried. 

But as much as he wanted to go to her, he didn’t. The space between them was intimate enough for now, he supposed and Strand didn’t want to frighten her into bolting. She’d agreed to come with him, but that was only the first step. The next step was to have Alex take his hand and for the two of them to leave to some place where Simon couldn’t ever find her again. Where no one else could. This too was his Alex, without her guards and without her shields and with the softness in her tone that she only shared with the world in the most intimate space of her nightmares. 

“She was a…” Alex paused, and she seemed to search her memory for some kind of shared vocabulary for what it was that they all could it seemed. “She practiced, I guess, a different kind of power than what he did. I remember them fighting when she found us and the open gate. My biological mother… she said that he’d only picked her because of her power and that he’d ruin her life but she wouldn’t let him ruin mine. And then she did _something_ because he hit the wall and the gate and she grabbed me and we ran.” The tears were coming down her cheeks now, as she was lost in her memory, one hand extended in front of her. Strand found himself on his feet almost against his will and he reached out to wrap his fingers around her own again, their palms meeting as he laced his fingers between Alex’s. She didn’t grip him back, but she didn’t pull away either, which was another step of progress, and of victory and he was counting it as such. 

“He kept finding us. Then we were in Canada and we went to a park. It was spring and the daffodils were just starting to open. I picked some and then when I turned around to find my mother to give them to her, she was gone. I remember screaming for her and other mothers came running. But then I didn’t remember anything. I couldn’t even remember my own name.” 

Richard traced his fingers along her cheek, gathering the tears there instead of with his tongue as if he was planning on saving them for later. He stood very close to her, between her and any form of escape when he asked softly, feeling like he already knew at least some version of the answer to his question: “What was the birthname that he gave you, Alex?” 

Alex wasn’t looking at him, instead her eyes were downcast, staring at some point in his chest rather than his face and he couldn’t falter her for that, but he leaned forward to hear her whisper: “Proserpina. They named me Proserpina. Simon’s father always that it meant ‘she emerges.’” 

Richard laughed then, and it was a dark sound that mixed with the chuffing laughter that she’d always so highly prized. “Of course it was, Alex. Of course it was.” His hand moved to cup her chin once more, holding onto it so he looked into her eyes, appraising her in an entirely new light. “He spent his entire life looking for you, and I found you without meaning to. You called me eleven times and then walked into my life. I told you before that you were at the center of this with me, and even I didn’t know how much. I thought it was just because of your potential and my feelings for you, but…” 

Alex tried to pull her hand away from his and she shook her head quickly. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” 

Strand pressed closer to her and spoke just loudly enough for her to hear him over the crashing sounds of the waves. “In one of my father’s journals there was a list, a family tree of sorts. It traced the maternal line of one family, the Caro diSalvai family starting in the late sixteenth century. In each generation one child would be born and whether legitimate or not they would carry the Caro diSalvai last name. The child was always female and she would always be named for a Roman goddess, with certain names repeating. When the family emigrated to America in the 1890s, the Salvai part of the last name was dropped, in an effort, or so my father believed to better hide from their enemies.” 

Alex was frowning at him, and she wore the look she wore when she didn’t want to hear something that he was saying to her, and she was about to interrupt when he pressed his fingers to her lips. He could feel rather than see the scowl below them, but he was too excited and this was too important for her to argue with him over, not now when he was finally able to _see_ it. 

“My father had managed to track the line from mother to daughter until the 1990s when he believed that the last of the line, Diana diCaro had been found murdered in Minnesota. There was no record of her ever having a child.” Alex went still against him for a long moment, and he drew his fingers away from her lips to nod. 

“But why? Why would he be tracking my biological mother? What enemies did they have?” At least she kept her voice down, even though that angry panic was still inside of it. His hand held her face once more. 

“The Mantellum Lunae. The Mantle of the Moon. The last of the line on the Horn of Tiamat Alex.” His voice was soft as he responded from memory: “ _The night will be forever, when the last of the line, the dark one, surrounded by the many, rises from sleep to devour the world._ ” He stroked her cheek when he whispered: “You, my Alex, are the last of the line. My Persephone with the Mantle of the Moon. The Strand family has searched for yours for centuries and now we are here together just as the prophecy said we would be.” 

“Richard, stop it. You’re scaring me!” She didn’t sound scared to Strand’s ears; she sounded angry and uncertain but not scared. Alex shoved back against him, but he didn’t budge as his eyes stared into her own. 

“No, there’s a difference Alex. You just don’t understand yet. You will. Because you are mine, Alex. You were always supposed to be mine. I didn’t even know why I wanted to claim you when you came into my office, but it all makes perfect sense now. I had thought I was preparing you for when your power was awoken, but no, I was preparing you for this. You see, Alex.” Strand stepped closer to her, forming almost against her and he knew that he seemed all the larger for it. He couldn’t let her escape, not now. Not ever. 

“I had already known my father was preparing me for the Mantle of the Dragon. The Mantellum Draco. It had been passed down from parent to child for generations. When the parent would die, then it would leave them and go to the next in line. My father’s way of preparing me for it was unique, you see. I had never believed in what it was, not until it happened to me. You never put the dates together, did you, Alex? No one ever seemed to, because everyone had assumed that my father had died a year before he did. But he didn’t. He died on the fourth day that I was in the woods with Charlie hunting for Coralee. The reason that Charlie left wasn’t because she believed that I had something to do with my wife’s disappearance. It was because she was there for the first time when my eyes turned black.” 

Alex’s face paled then, and he could see her eyes go wide behind her glasses, and the fear around them was palpable as he tightened his hand into her hair. “You see, Alex, the Mantellum was never a title or it was never a new power. It’s always been a demon that’s lived in the back of our head for generations. Always working through us to fulfill the idea of bringing Tiamat’s demons back into the world. However, there are those of us in the family that have been able to control it. My grandfather, my father, myself.” There was a beat. “More or less. Some of my family have been able to use it, like my father as well. That’s why he told me the story in the cave. That’s why he beat me whenever my powers manifested. He wanted me to be able to control the fear that the demon would use to control me if it could.” 

He paused for a moment. “I was attempting to give you the same gift.” 

“The same gift?” Alex mirrored to him only reflected it back to him in a shout. “I haven’t slept in nearly two years, Richard. I have thought that I was going completely insane. Nearly everything of value that I have possessed you have tried to strip away from me: my friends, my job, my credibility, everything! That is not a fucking gift, Strand. That’s you being a bastard.” She slapped him then, and he could feel her summoning her magic. It was awkward and it was unstable but he could feel how strong it was. 

When they reached their destination, he would need to take steps. 

“No, Alex.” His voice was sharp and his hand moved from her hair to her neck and he started to squeeze. “If I was a bastard, I would just kill you here and now so that the demons would come. But you’re the mantle too. You’re the last of the line and you’re going to be the one who stops it. You’re going to be the one who sets me and Charlie free. You’re not going anywhere.” 

He squeezed more tightly on one side of her neck with his fingers and the other side with his magic before pressing his forehead to hers as he did so, and he whispered softly. “No, Alex, don’t fight it. Let unconsciousness overtake you. Just give into it, my Alex. I’m taking you somewhere safe where you can never leave me from again.” 

Alex’s face was turning red as he applied more pressure, and she was gasping, her hand scratching wildly at his own. “Richard. Please.” The words were a croak, and he shushed her again. 

“Let go, Alex. When you wake up, we’ll be home. You’ll forgive me in time, I know you will.” Strand could feel his eyes darkening once more, and his hand rested at her waist until he felt her going limp.


	4. Underworld i.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I guess all it takes is Christian Sloan and Paul Bae putting stories on instagram about new stuff actually coming out and my crops are watered, my skin is cleared and the problem I've been having with this fic for a year is solved in one night. 
> 
> This chapter was originally one long massive one, but it's broken up into three parts for easier reading. All three parts are done, and the last chapter is currently open in docs. I'm gonna upload the chapters I've got over the next couple of days!
> 
> Also thanks and a shoutout to Nerdyvixen for 1. reading this monster in its original form and 2. for cheerleading and being awesome.

Richard Strand didn’t know exactly how long he’d been sitting in the chair at Alex’s bedside, but he knew that it had been quite a while given how the sun had been high in the sky and now the shadows of dusk were starting to spill across the room. For the first time in quite a long time, Strand didn’t need to count them or to do anything to make certain that they weren’t larger or hungrier than they should have been. This place, this little pocket had a magic of its own in that it it almost seemed to swallow it, which perhaps was one of the reasons that Alex was sleeping so soundly. Even at his father’s house she’d shifted and rolled and there had been nightmares, but here he’d needed to approach her in order to make certain that she was breathing, and that he hadn’t done her any damage when he’d knocked her out.

Physical damage, anyway. The emotional damage was something that he was going to need to work on because Strand knew Alex, and he knew that she meant it when she’d told him that she wouldn’t forgive him if he kidnapped her again. It would take some doing, but Richard was certain that he would convince her to accept why he’d done it, and to understand. There were things that they couldn’t discuss anywhere else, and he had needed to assure her safety.

Of course they wouldn’t be found here, and Strand could have adjourned to the far more comfortable bed in the guest room (for which the muscles in his back would thank him) but he couldn’t. Alex would be angry and upset when she awoke, and he didn’t want her to be alone and in a strange place and in strange clothing when she realized that what had been happening for the last few weeks wasn’t something that was as easily as forgotten as a nightmare.

Not that Alex’s nightmares were easy to forget, and for the first time since he’d placed the sigils below her bed, Strand actually experienced a prang of guilt. Not because he’d done it; Alex needed to be protected, and she was his after all, but because he’d not realized what she was before this. The magic inside of her, even if she couldn’t access it was constantly going to be in a fight with the magic that was around her. The two different schools were literally _made_ for that. For quite some time, even when he’d gone back and finally listened to the podcast (which he had quit in a rage after hearing Alex describe Thomas Warren as ‘Sexy James Bond’ sometime during the first season) he had assumed that yes, the nightmares had some of their basis in what was etched below her bed but the rest of it was because of Alex’s overly abundant imagination. He was going to need to apologize to her for that perhaps. If she allowed him to get in a word in edgewise, of course.

Alex was starting to wake up, he knew. He could see her sleep starting to grow more restless, and she made a raw whimpering sound in her throat before she jolted upwards, letting the duvet fall from her chest and exposing the silk nightshirt that he’d put her in. Her hands reached blindly around her, before he just murmured softly. “On the nightstand next to you.” Strand had hoped that there would be a sigh of relief, but instead Alex startled, and she reached out blindly for the glasses.

Then she turned them over and over in her hands, her voice soft. “These aren’t mine.”  
“No,” the word was a sigh and he shook his head. “But they should be the proper prescription. I took the old ones to lenscrafters and had them make you a new pair. The others had been broken. I told them that you were my wife and I’d sat on them.” The lie rolled smoothly off his tongue, just as much as the others hand and he knew that he should be ashamed of himself for that, but he wasn’t. Alex would argue about this, and they were going to argue about so much that this point wasn’t important. Sometimes Alex could get too bogged down in details and when she was furious with him, he’d prefer that she was for the right reasons rather than something as small and inconsequential as glasses happened to be.

Her eyes sought him (or at least the vague outline of him that she could see) before she slipped the frames onto her face. They suited her, he knew, and of course they would be an adjustment but they were better than the other pair that she had for a multitude of reasons.

With her glasses on, Alex’s hand moved over the bedside table again, finding the switch for the lamp that was there, and the both of them blinked at the sudden brightness that flooded the room. Her voice was soft for her, and there was a note of fear mixed inside of her simmering anger. Strand was reminded of the times at the beginning of their time together when their fights had happened over the phone and had normally ended with one or both of them firmly pressing the end button. Unfortunately for them now, things had progressed far beyond that. “Where am I?” The way that ‘we’ had become ‘I’ made Richard flinch, and he hadn’t even realized that there was the possibility that somehow the two of them would stop becoming a unit within Alex Reagan’s head. Of course, he understood the reasonings for it, but it made his own anger flare to meet her own, despite how he was attempting to be distant from her.

“We’re at a small cottage that my father owned on an island in Oregon. Abilities of any sort don’t work here, so we’ll be safe for a short period of time while we discuss our next steps.”

“Your father didn’t own any property on an island, Dr. Strand,” Alex’s voice had a sharpness in it, and a coldness as well, it rankled him when she added, “I’ve seen his will and estate stuff, remember?”

“You cannot seriously be attempting to go back to call me ‘Dr. Strand’, Alex. It’s a childish attempt to get under my skin.”

There was an angry desperation to her voice when she replied, “you don’t get to be Richard anymore, _Dr. Strand_. You fucking aren’t my lover or my friend right now. You’re just someone who kidnapped me after telling me that I was safe with you and I could trust you.” Her eyes were hard and sharp when she stared at him, and she gripped the blanket even tighter as if she could use the thread count as a way to create an additional create an additional barrier. In doing so Alex realized something else: even the underwear she was wearing wasn't her.

“Jesus, Strand. You couldn't even leave me my own fucking underwear?” The anger was sharper now because he'd completely changed her and she knew instinctively that nothing of her own life had come along to this with her other than her skin.

Strand’s anger rose to meet her own once again, a primal heat that he couldn't blame on a demon or the voice of wanting to possess her in his head. Without thinking about it, he shouted back to her: “Are you so damned attached to your meundies and your bombas socks that they're what you focus on at the moment?!” He sounded as if he couldn't believe it.

But he was answered by a faint and distant smile with a matching soft voice. “You know two months ago Nic bet me a hundred bucks that you would say it.”

“Well,” he answered in a softer voice that he was full of easier times. “I suppose that explains why he offered me fifty to say it in front of you.” A best and then he added: “he's fine. Both he and Simon are. I kept my word on that.”

Shifting uncomfortably Alex looked towards the window and the dim light that was coming through the curtains. Her voice was soft and full of cold anger and a sharp fear that cut him to the core. “How long have I been out?”

Strand sighed because there was no easy way to explain this without it sounding far worse than he himself considered it. “A little over two days. After I initially made you unconscious we returned to my house and you would have woken in twenty minutes if I hadn't drugged you.”

“You _drugged me_?! Seriously?! What did you just happen to have a supply of sedatives or were you waiting for the proper time to use them on me?!” Furious color was in her face and her eyes were flashing as she finally threw the comforter off of her.

Coldness laced Strand’s response, sharp and artic in a way that he'd not used on her since she'd followed him to the hotel when he was planning on meeting Coralee. Not that he was going to explain the true reason for his trip there of course. Alex didn't need to know why. “I only did what was necessary to keep you safe, Alex. Being well aware that you wouldn't board the boat willingly and without causing a scene I needed to take steps. This is the only place on the planet where the two of us can talk just us.” 

Alex responded in kind, slipping into that same older harshness. “I don't _want_ to talk to you! I don't want to fucking see you. Get out Richard. Just leave me alone to think!”

“Alex.”

“No! Don't Alex me! If you care about me at all like you say you do? Like you made me believe you did? You'll give me space. I deserve space. I can't leave, you made damned sure of that but I don't want to talk to you until I'm ready!” Moving from the bed on wobbly legs, Alex stormed as best she could over to one of the doors in the room and threw it open. “If you love me, Richard.” Her voice was soft steel, trying to be as cutting as his own was but she couldn't manage it. Alex couldn't keep the harshness of her heartbreak from her voice. She was too expressive for that. “You'll not say another word and just get out.”

Strand’s mouth dropped open and he stared at her dumbly for a long moment, finally seeing the hurt that he had caused her. His Alex looked like a person he didn't even know right now. Closing his mouth, Strand rose from the chair and moved towards the door, pausing when he was close enough to reach out and try to stroke her face.

Alex flinched. Alex flinched away from him and she made no effort to hide or otherwise hide her reaction to him. Frowning and meeting the anger in her eyes, Strand just nodded before he moved through the door frame without making a sound as she had asked.

Alex's response was to slam the door so hard that it vibrated the cottage.

Her silence lasted three days. Strand counted each moment, pacing and sleeping in a chair in the hallway outside of the master bedroom to see if she called for him. She didn't. At meal times he dutifully brought her foods that he knew she loved and he left them outside the door with a knock to alert her to their presence. The door remained solidly shut even when he made certain that the entire house smelled of coffee. If it wasn't for the sound of her pacing across the hardwood or the occasional running of the water in the ensuite, he would have thought her gone. Or worse.

Strand was making lunch for the two of them, a simple meal that he knew she liked when he felt it, a change in the atmosphere of the house. Powers weren't supposed to work here, but he could feel her and feel that she'd made a decision. Looking out the small kitchen window, he saw his Alex for the first time in days and she was dressed in the clothing he had purchased for her, and her coat was black instead of red but as she looked over the bluffs, she was very much the Alex he knew. The determination was back in her spine, giving her frame strength and Richard just moved to meet her, feeling much like he imagined that Calvin felt when he was on his way to the pyre.

Without turning around, Alex spoke softly well before he was in range of touching her and her voice was a knife that cut through him, her words and the truth within him slicing like a samurai. “If you come any closer, Richard, we’re going to find out which is stronger: your sigil to protect me or the island that swallows magic.”

He believed her. He knew that Alex had been thinking about this for a long time and if he didn't agree with what she wanted, she would end this on her own terms. Sticking his hands into the pockets of his slacks he just waited for her to turn around and tell him what she wanted.

At least she didn't keep him waiting long. Turning around, Alex looked almost luminous; since she'd first walked into his office Strand had seen the light within her. He'd watched glow more brightly when she was angry or when she was happy, and he'd seen it so dim it was nearly faded when she was lost in her insomnia. Right now it was on full display, practically crackling from her gaze as her eyes sought and found his own.

“I'm going to go with you to close the door or whatever I need to do. I'm not the sort of person who would leave you or Charlie or the world to demons. You know me better that that.” Her voice was cold and sharp but some of the light was hurt there, even more that Alex wanted to admit.

“But we're going to do it my way. No more portals. No more kidnapping, no you deciding on new clothes for me because you think Simon put a tracker on them.” Her frown deepened at that and Strand wasn't at all surprised that she had put it all together. “He wouldn't do that. You're the only one who thought of it.”

Without leaving Strand time to respond, Alex just continued. “You're going to call the boat to take us home. I'm going to be given a phone to call Nic and my parents and everyone else that I'm fine.” And, Richard knew that she wanted to hear that Nic and Simon were okay with her own years. She didn't trust him not to do it.  
Attempting to keep his own angry hurt from his voice and not succeeding at all, Strand just asked softly: “then what?”

“Then we get onto the plane to Geneva. Tickets are on you. We use are normal passports. Nic will tell the audience that the two of us have parted ways and I'm on another vacation. We do what we need to do in Geneva and once you're free, I'm never going to see you again. Ever. I do this for you and we're done, Richard. You and I will just be people that might have been a good thing once if you hadn't…” Alex left the sentence open for him to fill in the blanks of the things that he'd done or not done in their relationship that was enough for him to end it.

“How do I know you're really going to go through with this, Alex? As soon as we clear the water around the island, you could jump.” Either by portal or into the water and both options were equally dangerous.

“I've thought of that. During this entire thing I promise to stay with you. In sight of you if necessary unless I'm going to the bathroom or something. I'm going to give you my word that I'll see this through but how I chose to do it.”

“Fine.” The word was a long and drawn out sigh, because right now it seemed like he didn't have a choice even though his mind was screaming that of course he couldn't let her go. Of course that wasn't going to be the end. It was just going to be the beginning of the parts of the life that were his and his alone. For once Strand had made a choice against the will of the demon, or his father’s voice in his head reminding him that logic not love was the only thing that mattered.

Slowly he extended his hand to her, planning on shaking her own to seal the deal, but Alex took a step away from him. “No. No touching me. That's against the rules now, Strand. You're not my boyfriend anymore. You're my partner in the business sense of the word until this is finished. Then you're no one. I'm going to assume that once the demon is gone tracking me won't be a problem and even if it is you're not going to do it.”

It was then that Richard protested, sharply and with a bit of desperation in his tone. “No. That's an impossibility, Alex. If I can't touch you I can't control the demon fully. You don't understand how it was when I was gone for three months or before I came to Seattle. The demon only stopped fighting so intensely because you were there. I can't plan to fight him and end this without you.”

The coldness that was in Alex's face melted into confusion and hurt and most tellingly of all about her: that famous Alex Reagan interest that was her singular look. Her mouth dropped open to ask what he was sure would be a succession of questions about the demon, but when she peered into her hand for a moment Alex was reminded that there was no recorder and right now this wasn't a case of her with her subject. It was personal and the audience wasn't here so it didn't need to know.

For now, the questions died in a desperate sigh of resignation. “Fine. I'll touch you. I'll hold your fucking hand if I have to. But then this is done. Say it Richard. I need you to agree and say it.” Desperation laced through her tones, and as he stared into her face Strand could see the pain there, the openness and love she was trying to fight.

So his voice was very quiet as he agreed to what he said, but left himself a loophole. Normally Richard Strand didn't lie outright. Like the demon in his head, he well knew the ins and the outs of speaking the truth. “I promise that as long as you say we are done, Alex, we're done. I will not track you or contact you.”

But Richard left a hole open that even Alex could see through without looking through contextual clues. Whatever else, Strand still believed in their connection, still believed in them, and he still believed in their love for one another.

In the end, Alex would contact him like she always did, being it eleven calls or showing up in Chicago or following him to Victoria. Richard wouldn't need to break his promise because Alex herself would.

Almost as if she could read his thoughts, she spoke in a determined and angry whisper. “No I won't.”

He didn't respond, instead he half-turned from her and gestured to the house, pulling his self-assured shell around him with that same wiry smile that he always did. “I'll go call the boat. We’ll have a few hours. If nothing else I'm certain you need to eat and I just made a pot of fresh coffee in the kitchen. Come. You'll need to keep your strength up.”

He started to walk away without looking behind him like Orpheus trusting that Alex was there and following behind even if she didn't say anything.


	5. Underworld ii

She didn't say anything. He'd forgotten or hadn't appreciated how much she just talked to him before. Now she was there and only spoke or looked at him when such things became an absolute necessity.

Sitting down and eating was almost automatic as if Alex was running on autopilot but he could tell by the way that she stabbed her eggs that she was still livid with him. Livid yes, but it would pass. Alex’s anger was a thundercloud; sharp and frightening when it occurred but then it would pass and things would be fine again. At least since he’d come back last time. Things would be again. He knew it.

Richard Strand had sworn an oath on Alex’s name and on who she was, and he was going on faith that she’d still be sitting there when he came back from calling the boat from the small boathouse set closer to the water. It would be several hours, he told her when he returned and Alex just nodded starting on what he had assumed was her second pot of coffee.

Sitting there in the uncompanionable silence, for the first time Richard had an inkling of what this might be like if that anger didn’t break. Alex was here, but everything that made her his Alex was sealed under her pain and rage towards him. Surprising him was supposed to be good after all, but for the first time strand wondered if he could stand this one.

For lack of anything better to do, he just stood and suggested, “I’m going to go pack our things.” Alex didn’t say anything, she just nodded and focused beyond him and he wanted to shake her or to scream at her or do something to make her cry so that there would be a glimpse of the whom who was supposed to be his.

This Alex wasn’t.

She barely acknowledged him when the boat arrived or when they boarded it and it was only when the Magic of the island started to seep off of them that he found his glimpse. As she had promised, Alex slipped his hand into his own and held onto it while they drew closer to the city that was hers.

Once the two of them were in his house and he’d given her back her own glasses and her phone she let out a little relieved sigh. It was promising as she sat next to him on the sofa where he had almost kissed her that time. Immediately she called Nic and he answered on the first ring. It must have been a record.

“Alex? Alex? Is that you are you okay? Did you get away from him? Where the hell are you?” Nic’s voice was soft but frantic and when Richard heard it mixing with Simon’s he nearly growled.

But no, Alex wasn’t blank now. She was angry and there was a sharpness in her voice. “Nic I don’t have a lot of time here okay?! I’m fine. I’m safe. And I’m doing what I need to do. I just am calling because I know MK has my passport flagged and I’m about to be leaving the country.”

“Alex you cannot go to Geneva with Strand. Think about it. He’s the Adversary! Doing this is suicide!”

“I don’t think it is. No. I _know_ it’s not. I know it may be the one thing that protects all the people that I care about.” He was watching her intently and when she said all the people that she cared about, her eyes slid to him almost before she could prevent it.

Strand had to stop himself from smiling.

“Nic shut up and put me on speaker so that Simon can hear me too.” That was her same old voice with her same old ordering tone in it and they both knew that Nic had done as she’d told him to do. “Look. I don’t have time for arguing and it wouldn’t work anyway. I’m going to close the door and then everyone will be safe. If something happens where it doesn’t work, _Simon_ just go. Just run okay. Let me do this and keep you safe for once. I love you both. You’ll know what happens one way or another. If you love me you’ll let me do this.” Her eyes flashed to Strand’s for a minute and the anger was back. “Don’t be Strand.”

She clicked off the call and then called her parents to let them know that she was fine and Nic was overreacting and she’d see them in a few days. It seemed easier for her to lie to them. Maybe because they didn’t have enough of the puzzle pieces to fight her on it.

The trip through the airport was easy and while the two of them were in their first class seats, Alex held his hand even if she wasn’t talking to him. Instead she tried to sleep. But the closer that they came to Geneva the more restless her sleep was and in the end she just ordered more coffee to keep awake. The two of them had flown together almost more times than he could count, and he’d never seen Alex like this on a flight before. It was… concerning to say the least.

As they moved through customs and the airport to their rental car, Richard was no longer certain if he was holding her hand because he needed help, or if he was holding it because she did.

Alex forced herself to eat the coffee and the pastries he’d purchased after he started to drive in what he knew was the proper direction to take. It was like being on autopilot and driving home from campus or from his father’s house to Alex’s studio. If he was honest with himself (and Richard did try to be honest with himself as often as he could) Richard wasn’t surprised. All fifty-four years of his life had been leading to this moment, and what Thomas Warren had been looking for in his blood, the hereditary demon had been looking forward to it for longer than even Richard could fathom.

 

Perhaps that’s why it was so quiet as Richard slipped easily from the major highway to older, smaller roads. Roads that had once been paved with stone and matted by feet before that. He knew where he was meant to be going, and he felt better than he had in a long time. When he caught his glance in the rearview mirror, even looked better. There wasn’t a single shadow below his blue eyes, and he certainly didn’t look (or feel) as if he’d come off of a twelve hour flight and the three hours on either side that accompanied it.

But Alex, Alex frightened him. Even when she’d not been sleeping last year, even when she was at her worst, he didn't think she looked this pale. Her thumb brushed along the back of his hand, and it only moved in slow circles. The question started to fall from his lips, and Alex just turned away from the scenery through the window to look at him. “Don’t. I’m okay.”

He wanted to believe her, but all of his instincts that weren’t the logic of the demon were fighting the ones to keep driving towards the Axis Mundae. She didn't look okay, and she didn't sound okay. She sounded exhausted and thin, even more so than she sounded when she awoke in the middle of the night with the shadows looming around her. "Alex," he just breathed, and she tried to smile for him, and all it did was simply make her look like she was wearing almost a mask of herself. A pale and wane mask that hadn't eaten in a few days. 

Something flashed, an almost external feeling of concern, and Strand didn't need to question where it'd come from. It had the same looming presence in his head. There were no words, because there were never words when he was around Alex, but Strand could feel the demons intentionality as he reached over and took her hand, perhaps to comfort perhaps to check his prey, but the demon used his fingers as he slipped them between Alex's own. 

All he felt was cold and he was trying to place it before the sense of the demon returned to the back of his mind where he resided. Alex screamed and jerked away quickly, withdrawing as far away from him as she could get into the door. "Jesus, Richard!" Pain had at least given her some of her spirit back, some of her fire and it felt good even with the accusation flooding her tone. "Why the hell did you have to burn me? What the fuck?!" 

"I didn't know it would!" He protested quickly, pulling the car into a small divot off of the slow back road that they were travelling along and he stopped the car to look her in the eye. "Alex I swear, I didn't know it would do that. I'm..." There was a typical Strand pause there before he added, "concerned about you. I swear, we..." And he immediately corrected, " _I_ am concerned about you Alex. You are not looking yourself." 

"You'll need to forgive me if I don't believe that a fucking demon has concern about me, Richard. Unless it's concern that I'm going to die before it can kill me." 

"Alex." The word was a protest, and he could feel the demon's emotions as they shifted into an uneasy and unhealthy anger. But before he could say anything else, Alex spoke again. 

"Save it, Strand." And then her voice was softer, as she looked out of the car at a barely visible path through thickening trees. "It doesn't matter anyway. We walk from here." Richard was doubting that she could walk at this point, but she undid her seatbelt and slid from the passenger seat like she was a sort of a sleepwalker. He watched her, becoming aware of how foggy it was becoming. Alex didn't look back, and the black coat that she was wearing didn't make it as easy for him to track her as it otherwise might, and he had a terrible memory start to slide through him before he stepped from the car and moved hurriedly to catch up with her. 

Any gear or anything was left in the car; there simply wasn't time for him to grab it not while Alex wasn't looking back. But he felt it too, the thick pull of something, and the further Alex got, the louder the demon became, pressing forward from the back of his mind closer to his temples. The demon was more powerful than he'd ever experienced before and the force of it almost sent him to his knees, but he knew that if he faltered, then the demon would simply... replace him as it had before. No, Richard needed to be himself for Alex, and in this the demon and he were a united front: Alex needed to be caught up with and kept. Kept was it's own separate thought, and one that Richard wasn't going to follow up on as he moved through the brush in a way that was familiar, but at least Alex wasn't running in terror. 

For the first time since he had known her, Alex walked through a forest with sure feet, not worrying about tripping over something or having branches hitting her legs. She still didn't look good and she wasn't moving with any speed but she didn't need to reach out to the trees for support either. In some way, it was almost as if the vegetation itself was moving aside for her. And for him. It was easy for Richard to reach her, and he walked with her, slowing his strides to match hers like he had been doing for three years. It was almost a reflex now, and Richard was glad of it because he was ready to reach out and catch her if he needed too. 

Any internal sense of timing was gone for him as they moved through the forest, the canopy of the branches weaving together and casting them into a perpetual twilight that wasn't true darkness. What was more disconcerting ways the way that the sounds of the forest creatures had simply stopped. There had been no gradual loss of sound or volume, it was just gone, and he could tell that Alex was concerned as well with the way that she moved closer to him, and her steps slowed a bit. 

There was a break in the forest between them that practically made the demon shout with glee, and he was certain that had caused Alex to stop. Speaking her name softly, she just looked at him in a way that was sad. Terribly sad, sadder even than the look she'd given him the night that Coralee had 'left' again. It matched her voice when she spoke in response. "We're here."   
"I know." His voice was equally soft, and he wanted nothing more than to take her hand and step into the clearing with her, but even in the low light, her normally fair skin was still red. She surprised him however, by wrapping his fingers with her anyway, and Richard could only just lift her hand and press his lips to the back of it and there was a soft and slight smile on Alex’s lips and she nodded before the two of them stepped forward into the clearing. 

The clearing itself was colder, Richard could feel it crawling over his skin. Or perhaps that was the sensation of ancient and hungry eyes moving over him as the two of them stepped towards the circle where nothing grew. If he looked at it just right, he could see a darkness there, but a gleaming sort of one, almost like a glitter different than what it was. His breath was visible and so was Alex's when she looked at him. Swallowing, she just took a step forward one of her hands extended towards the almost ripple in the space before them. 

The sound of the shot only registered when he heard Alex's scream, and her hand was jerked away from his own. She was falling, and she was bleeding and he couldn't see where it was from but it the bright copper smell of it bloomed around them. Instantly, Richard and the demon growled at once, and he could feel the blue of his eyes darken with rage as he started to move. into a defensive posture, ready to attack whoever was out there, ready to defend Alex whatever it took. Shadows swirled around them, the unnaturalness of them causing the demon to almost recoil as Alex was hidden from their sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for that cliffhanger there. Once again thanks to nerdyvixen for helping me to decide how to break this story up! (So I guess you can like blame her for 10% of the cliffhanger.) The next part of the Underworld chapter will come in three days! Not too bad, right? 
> 
> Also comments give me life!


	6. Underworld iii

"Alex!" He roared her name as those fake demons swarmed her, and it was only when another voice rang out into the clearing that he stopped. 

"I wouldn't do that, Richard." Thomas Warren spoke like he was amused, in the same way that he always had. And of course like he knew Strand himself. "Your little journalist is alive for now, I swear it to Tiamat. But she doesn't need to remain so. I am a very good shot and the next one will go through her head and not her shoulder." 

Strand's already deep voice went lower and darker, and it carried an echo with it as he took a step towards Warren as the words left his lips. "Not if I kill you first." 

"Then she's already dead." Warren countered, not even bothering to look afraid. "Because I am the only thing that is stopping my little pets from tearing her pretty little body into a pretty little corpse." Richard took another step towards him, and his hand reached forward, collecting darkness with it as it went. But before he could do anything Alex let out a thin scream and a whimper behind where he couldn't see. Something inside of him roared, and Richard himself didn’t know if he had done it or if the demon had. Perhaps it was both, but it didn’t matter. As if either of those things didn't happen, Thomas Warren just kept talking. "Now that you're finished with that, Richard. We can get down to business." 

"Leave. Alex. Alone." His voice was louder now, and the extra definition in it sounded like a knife made of night that was ready to slice Warren into a thousand pieces. 

"I'm sure if you're that considered about little Prosphena's" If Richard was surprised by Warren's use of Alex Reagan's birth name then it didn't show on his face. His face was mostly a mask save for the rage in his eyes. "safety then you can pay attention to me for five minutes. And you can hold your friend back I'm assuming? You've been so good about it for so long, after all." 

"What the hell do you want, Warren," Richard's voice was Richard's again, angry and sharp and biting, but Richard's. "I am not interested in playing any more of your games."

"I want what I've always wanted, Richard. For you to get here and to open your birthright and to bring Tiamat's demons back into the world." Warren's eyes were filled with zealotry, and he didn't look away from Richard's. "The blood of the _Mantellum Lunae_ is already there, and you didn't even need to harm a hair on your Alex's head. Gather her blood and run it along the door, Richard. It will open and your destiny will be fulfilled and more than that as the Mantle of the Dragon, you'll be revered. You'll have everything you want." 

Warren's voice lowered, and he took a step closer to Richard seeming as if there was no fear inside of him. "And we both know what you want, Richard. You want Charlie safe. Charlotte is a Strand, she would always be safe. Your line is sacred, Richard, they would not harm it. Cheryl too would be protected, because while you are angry with her for what she has done, she is still your twin. If she had preceded you, she'd be the one here instead of you. But then it wouldn't have been such a delightful way to get here, now would it?" There was something more than a little smug in Warren's voice, and there was a lewdness in the way he looked past Warren to where the shadows had her shrouded. 

Without meaning or wanting too, Richard followed his glance. Alex was invisible to him, but he was certain she was alive. If Alex had died, he'd decided, then there would have been something inside of him that would have known it. But he could see the pale spreading of her blood, bringing the tiniest bit of light into the darkness, and it ran towards the door in a thin but steady seeming stream. Where it touched the void that was there, sigils started to glow, and the door between the worlds shimmered, becoming less of a void and allowing more of the visions behind it to be seen. 

Strand was glad that Alex couldn't see. If Alex saw then there was something in her mind that would break, he knew it even as one of the demons, the Helvation pushed against the barrier and drew back with a soundless hiss. 

Warren kept talking, forcing Richard to rip his attention away from the Tall Men who had shattered the bond between he and his twin all those years ago, because when that door was opened was when the split between them had started, and it had only taken Coralee's going missing to finally sunder it. "And I know you want to punish Coralee for everything that she's done, Richard, from marrying you and destroying your heart and then again for going into your office and copying your journals so that Simon can give them to our little reporter over there. And of course Simon... Well, perhaps the less about him said the better." The words were an amused drawl and Richard grit his teeth. 

"Stop trying to play with me, Warren. I am not a mouse here for your amusement." 

"Of course not, Richard," even if he still did sound amused. "And you'll have what it is that you want most, Richard. In the way that you want it the most. Alex Reagan will leave you like everyone else, Richard. But you've always known that haven't you?” There was a sudden and sharp tensing in Strand’s chest. The feeling wasn’t unfamiliar after the fortnight or so, but it was harsher and more savage than it had been before. From the moment that Alex Reagan had entered his office, there had been something concerned with losing her. But he had tried to lose her before she could lose him. It didn’t work.

Things like that never worked. And of Warren was still droning on as if he was oblivious to the trembling in Richard’s hands with the need to kill. There was no way that he could be, but Warren acted as if he was. If the spots around Richard’s visions weren’t already sparking red in the black, it would have started now. “ Of course you have. That's why you've done everything that you can to tie you to her..” Perhaps if he was a better man, the man who actually would have deserved Alex Reagan, Strand would have been abashed by the things that he’d done to Alex. He wasn’t, there was no way that he could be. Alex was _his_ and whether she was his by trickery, universal intervention or because of the demon, he didn’t care. He’d do it all over again and a million things worse to twine the cords of their fates together where she loved him. There was no doubt in Strand’s mind that Warren knew that, which is why the idiot _kept going_! Did he ever shut up?! “ But it's not going to work. You know that she's not going to come to you like this. She will not be by your side..."

"Enough of this, Warren. I thought you were going to be better than some sort of spy movie villain who has nothing more to do than to monologue when you think that you've won." Richard's voice was it's most sharp and biting, and the distaste for the other man almost overpowered the anger. Almost. 

"Oh yes, I bet that stang didn't it, Richard? Every time she called me her 'Sexy James Bond' I bet your heart twisted and seized.” It _had_ stang, even though Strand would deny it, and he’d torn the earbuds from his ears and had nearly smashed his phone into the wall after the first time. When he’d gone back and listened again, those three words had been almost a recrimination, lye dribbled onto unprotected flesh. There were few people in the world that he hated as much as he hated Warren, and Alex’s possible attraction needled him. The only thing that soothed the charred flesh of his ego around then had been when Alex had said that she was too freaked out by Warren to think of him in those terms. 

A harsh part of himself wondered if she would say something similar about her relationship with Richard Strand when they were done here. 

And Warren _was still fucking talking_! “Of course we all know what happened with what you did after her little walk with Tannis Braum, your little _overreaction_.” Alex knew about that now, it didn’t matter. He’d done what he’d needed to do to keep her safe. _To keep her._ And he’d do it again. “Simon Reese. Nic Silver.” The two names made him want to gnash his teeth together, but he didn’t, and both he and Warren knew why, those next two words out of that bastard’s mouth were an accusation enough. “Your jealousy, Richard is legendary. And let's be honest, it's probably well placed. Alex was drawn to Tannis, and _to me_ and to so many of the others along your little journey. She's not someone who you can control, Richard. She never was. Her little trip to Turkey, the times she never backed down from questioning you, all those personal little details she spilled on your life to her adoring public... All of the things about her that you hate, Richard. All of them would be gone. You'd have your Persephone exactly as you'd want her to be." 

An Alex without all of those things. An Alex who didn’t slam the door and push him away. An Alex whose safety wasn’t left only at the mercy of her charm or the marks on her back. Strand could feel the pressure from the demon for the choice. Alex, theirs. Theirs, theirs, theirs, his blood almost seemed to cry out from it, but then there was his Alex. This Alex would never be the one who he won over and would be rewarded with a smile by. This Alex would never lean over and whisper something that shocked him because Alex was too nice to say it. Or a joke she made that he needed to bite his lip to prevent the soft chuff of laughter from being released on. 

But more than that, Warren’s version of Alex would never look up at him and whisper, ‘I love you Richard Strand’, in the same way that his did, all possession and fire and fierceness at once. There was only one answer, and Richard's voice was soft but firm, when he responded. "But then she wouldn't be Alex. All of those things, those are who she is. I wouldn't change them." 

"Oh wouldn't you? Because you know she means what she's said. She's going to leave you, Richard. Leave you alone in that big house of your father's with the tatters of your skeptic reputation torn around her. And that's even before she decides that the world should know what happens here! What do you think is going to happen to your tiny and fragile reunion with your daughter when it comes out that you've been using your demonic magic this whole time? That you kidnapped Alex and held Nic hostage? That you've been manipulating a young and beautiful woman for nearly three years including having sex with her? We both know her, Richard. We know that she will. Because she's that sort of person and always has been. But you've never really seen her other than something to fuck because of who she was in relation to the mantle in your blood and the demon you've carried. They place pretty scales over your eyes, Richard but let's be honest. You hate her like this. She's nothing, not in comparison with you. She's nothing but the mantle she carries." 

Things were flying through Richard's memories almost too quickly to catch, which said something considering the size and processing ability of his brain. Normally the only things that progressed through his brain that quickly were bad ones, doubts and fears and being angry. But this was none of those things. Instead he saw Alex smile when she met him, the ways her eyes lit up when they shook hands. The lie she told to get back into his office. A hundred different moments of her bringing him the tea he liked into her office or hotel room along with her normal coffee. The sadness in her eyes when Coralee left and he explained so much about her past, the way she'd looked when she'd slept on his couch and he'd covered her with a blanket. And perhaps most of all, the way that her determination had dragged him back into the world when he didn't want to be. The way that she'd done it with no expectation of reward, without her knowing how much he cared for her. For Richard, what to do in this was the easiest decision that he’d made in some time. 

"Don't. You. Ever. Speak. Her. Name. Again." The words are bit through angrily grit teeth, and that was all of the warning that _any_ of them had before they attacked. It was definitely a joint effort with the demon throwing a spell backwards towards Warren's created demons and Richard moving forward to drive his hand through Warren's neck. The shadows swirled around them, and in the end, Warren was laying on the ground, his blood seeping into the circle that eagerly drank it it, marking the contrast of the swirling dark of the man's blood and the way that Alex's was practically glowing with it. 

For a moment, Strand just stood panting and paralyzed. The gate was nearly clear, and it was like looking into Tiamat's hell through a glass bottomed boat. A glass bottom boat that was promising to spring a leak. But for the first time, he heard the voice that was normally inside of his head was outside. It sounded like his own but different, as if Nic had taken something he'd said and run it through some moderation software. (It was, Richard decided, not all that far off from what his father had sounded like.) "He was not wrong, Richard. If you do not open the gate, she will be lost to us forever. Another loss, Richard. One that we could not handle." 

"I wouldn't want Alex as anything less than what she is." Richard responded quickly, taking a step towards the void, and the blood gleamed black as if Warren's was winning a battle that Strand hadn't even been aware off. The sigils swirled and switched, letting him pass through them without breaking them. 

"Do you think that we would, Richard? No. She will be angry, but she would eventually forgive us. Our Alex can forgive anything. Don't we already know this? She forgave us Coralee and the leaving and the lying. This is just one more thing. It would take time, but she would. And we will keep those she loves safe. We would not give her any reason to hate us." 

 

"Only the world," he said softly, but he took two steps closer, before he bent down and collected blood from the pool where Warren's and Alex's had mingled, lifting it upwards and reaching out towards the door. "But you're right. Alex would forgive me. Given time. And we’d have forever…” The words were almost whispered dream-like as he touched the door and made the first sigil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So one more chapter, the one that I know where it's going. Hopefully this monster will be done within the week! We'll see. Comments and kudos make me happy, and I'm always opens to questions. 
> 
> Oh also, I'm aproclivity at tumblr. Be warned: I never shut up.


	7. And Suddenly Hades Was Only A Man.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richard Strand and I were never going to be an ideal story. We were just the two of us, here and doing this, two people at the not-quite-end-of-the-world.

I had meant it when I had told Strand that I would jump if he came closer or if he didn’t do what I had wanted. It was odd; even when I was at my worst, the times when I slept the least and saw the things out of the corner of my eye, I had never wanted to end my life. Even now, I didn’t want to, but I refused to be his puppet in this any longer. There was only one way for me to end it, then: if he wouldn’t stop, I would do it. 

I’d rather be dead than without a choice. It was as simple as that. But Strand was a man who had lacked so many choices since the moment he’d been born, so maybe he didn’t understand that. People making his decisions--his father, Coralee, hell, even me at times--was something he was so used to that he didn’t think about how it would affect someone else.

How it would affect me. But then again, I had to wonder how many choices I had from when I first started this damn show. Richard Strand had manipulated me time and time again--and to be fair, I had manipulated him back. Maybe that’s all love was sometimes: being amused as the manipulative tennis match goes back and forth. Manipulating me and me know about it was just one thing, though. Leaving the rest of the world or anyone else like Simon or Sebastian or Katie was something else entirely. If he’d known me, he’d have to have known that, right?

It was a question that plagued me all the way to his house. It sat on the tip of my tongue, more poisonous than anything else I had asked him before, and waited like an adder. The words repeated through my head when I looked at him, when I held his hand. _How how how._ Did he know me at all? Did he actually care about me? Or was all of this really just something else ancient that was written on a song I’d learned with me fingers before Simon let me leave Turkey?

Of course, then I didn’t know what would happen when the two of us got closer to Geneva. I’d been to the area around Geneva before--flown over it, anyway--but I couldn’t explain what happened the closer we got to it. It was like the times in my dreams when I was stuck, held pinned underneath the covers by something else above me--sometimes the Helevation, sometimes one of the Tall Pauls, and sometimes, just myself. It was like my body because further away from me, and no matter how much coffee I drank or how concerned Strand looked when he watched my face, I couldn’t come back, couldn’t be there like I always was even when I was at my worst last year.

By the time we were in the car, I only knew what it felt like to be shoved into the back of my brain. Everything was just fog thick enough to touch. My fingers barely responded to my commands now, though. I--I just wanted to panic, but it was so hard to muster up the energy to do it. The thing that forced me into this quiet corner of my brain didn’t mean me harm, and the knowledge of that radiated through me, but it was still...it wasn’t what I wanted. Not for the first time since I’d found about Strand’s demon, I wanted to ask about it, to ask if this was what it felt like, but _she_ wouldn’t let the question past my lips. _She_ wouldn’t allow me to surface enough to even let him know something was wrong.

_She_. It? I didn’t even know anymore, but they didn’t like him. They knew my emotions but refused to acknowledge them, or me, or my concern for him. It refused to see how scared he was. I could see it, and even with everything else, I wanted to try and stave off some of that fear as much as I could, for as long as I could. Whatever was in front of us loomed so large and dark that it was afraid of it, too, and she could offer no words of reassurance that this wouldn’t end with one of us lying dead before the other.

Even if his love for me was nothing but another step in our manipulation, I still loved him. That little spark refused to be tamped down under the fog of the thing inside me. Honestly, I wondered if that was why I was still a passenger inside my body at all.

It was only the sharpness of the burn of Richard’s touch that brought me back for a little while; maybe she had forgotten what pain felt like for a human body, or maybe it was because of who caused it--either way, it let me have control for just a minute, even if it was just to curse him out for burning me. Maybe that’s why she allowed it. Maybe she thought that my doing it would hurt him.

Maybe she thought doing it would hurt _us_ , would hurt whatever tattered pieces of our relationship that remained intact.

The idea turned my stomach. Hurting him seemed almost like hurting myself, and seeing the emotion in his eyes caused the manacles in my chest to tighten, making it harder to breathe.

Or maybe it was because I knew this place. Even before there were demons or Strand or the Black Tapes, there was this place in my dreams. It had scared me since I was little, and I never knew why. Some forests had always given me an uneasy feeling, but I knew now that this was the root of it. Smaller pieces of it had been around me for years (the cabin where Sebastian Torres was found and the woods we searched for Nic came to mind), but this was it. 

When we told Richard that it was the place, it was both of us using my words.

I could barely remember moving through the forest; it seemed like she wanted it this way, whoever it was that had stolen my body, whoever’s mantle I was a part of. When Richard had said I was at the center of this with him, my genre-savvy self had thought I’d be fridged for being the best friend, maybe for being the love interest. 

I never imagined that I would be standing with him against the end of the world.

But his kiss on my hand didn’t feel like the end of the world. It felt like a promise he was making to me--I didn’t know what kind, but it seemed like maybe, just maybe, there was some kind of hope there, hope for us and for whatever was left between us when there were no more demons or mantles to trap and bind us together in some sort of spell. I wanted it to be true more than anything, and I tried to have faith in it, but those thoughts were splintered with the searing pain in my shoulder and the sensation of being swept from my feet.

I knew a bullet shouldn’t have moved me that much or as far--I’d watched a lot of _Mythbusters_ in the middle of the night--but Warren’s _things_ dragged me away from the Circle. The mob grasped at me, whispering loudly, making whatever Richard and Thomas Warren were saying saying more difficult to hear. _They_ didn’t want me to hear. _They_ wanted me unconscious but present for whatever reason she had-- _it_ had.

Jesus, how did my life get some complicated?

The darkness was worse than the one that filled my nightmares. Touches scalded and froze in turn as my body processed the too-steady flow of blood from my shoulder and back. It turned the packed dirt into mud that seemed destined to swallow me whole outside the Circle. I started to go into shock when one of the shadows loomed over my vision. Rot and hunger filled my mouth and throat, choking off the air I was already gasping and gaping at.

Fear, sharp and sinking, sank over me before the thing reached down and plunged one of its gnarled and twisted fingers into the bullet hole. I screamed and whimpered when it pulled out, dragging fresh blood and gore along with it. I was going to succumb to shock and die. I could feel it and could feel whatever it was inside of me, now silent and waiting.

But I was always a fighter. Richard had called me his ‘annoyingly persistent little journalist,’ and I wasn’t going to stop being that even then. The pain helped with that decision, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to thank the abomination Warren had made. Instead, I bit my lip and pulled off my scarf, balling up the pashmina and shoving it into my wound with a whimper.

There. If I was going to bleed out, then at least it was going to take longer. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something.

Warren was still speaking, and I could hear him now. I wanted to punch him in the mouth. He talked about taking my choices away, taking me away. That’s what he had meant: he would kill me and leave some sort of clone of Alex Reagan in my place, ready with a smile to…

_God, what the hell?!_

I wanted to scream and shout in protest, but I had to hear what it Richard’s response was. For a moment, it seemed like _everything_ was waiting for his response. Even the hungry leers of Warren’s demons stilled, and I swore the world was holding its breath to see what choice he made for himself.

He had this choice. He wanted me as me.

Letting out a groan laced and colored with pain, I closed my eyes, relieved. At least I didn’t have to worry about that. But Thomas Warren was still going, and the shapes around me began to move. An intense itching began in my palm, and for a minute, I just assumed that it was nothing more than drying blood before I remembered and pulled my hand to my face to look.

When I had gone to Turkey, I had touched the Horn of Tiamat. Simon had to have known that I would--I mean, especially if he told me not to; I was nothing if not contrary. But I had laid hands and fingers on it, traced the symbols over it on the fading parchment and then over the print out of the picture for what seemed like thousands of times. I remembered it then, or I _knew_ it or _something_ , but I--I was the Last of the Line from the Horn of Tiamat’s prophecy. I knew Strand was the Dark One, and then, I was the one who was surrounded by the many. I was surrounded by the many, but they couldn’t hold me. Not if I didn’t want them to.

Moving slowly so they couldn’t sense or feel what I was trying to do, I gathered up what was left inside of me, and then I shoved it around me with all my might. The shadows started to rise up and scatter. All of a sudden, something came at me. I dove back down so that I didn’t get caught up in what looked like some sort of Dungeons & Dragons illustration, full of black flames tipped with red. I knew it wasn’t meant to hurt me, but I doubted that Richard (or the demon in his head, the demon I doubted cared about _my_ wellbeing one way or another) knew that I might be in the way. He expected me to be on the ground. I couldn’t blame him for that.

Getting back to my feet and walking towards where something silver was fighting against something black was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. My sense of self-preservation decided to work, so I knew I was doing something really stupid. It only kicked in a handful of times in the past few years that I could think of: when I started chanting in my sleep, when I was in the cabin with Tannis Braun, when I recorded Richard and Amalia, and now--now, this time. I ignored it. Richard wanted me as myself, and that was what I would give him. 

When they--Richard and the demon--both said that I would forgive them, I wanted to argue it. Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t--but I had to stop this from happening. There was only one way. It felt like everything had been leading up to this: my choice. Richard had made his, and now this…

This was mine.

My voice carried easily over the eerie silence of the clearing. I was almost next to him now, ready for when he turned at the sound of my voice, soft and needy to my own ears: “Richard.” It was simple to say his name, easier than I wanted to admit since I’d started calling him that when he came back from Charlie.

“Richard.” I said it again, only slightly louder this time. “Wait.”

“Alex.” His voice was soft, a breath, almost: deep and achingly questioning, but relieved as well. Richard Strand got this look when I surprised him, and he wore it now, his fingers stretched towards me as if to check if I were real. The blood on his fingertips was the same shade as the things Warren had made. Maybe he realized that; his hand faltered just before it could touch my cheek.

“I’ll stay.” The words, quiet and simple, were a promise. “If you let me close the door, I’ll stay. With you.”

Canting his head towards me, he looked owlishly at me as he repeated my words to himself, softer than I’d ever heard his voice, with more of a question than I’d thought a sound could make. “You’ll stay?”

For a moment, the thing that had been quiet inside my head played me a conversation, something from another life where I asked him to run away with me, and he said just one word in that same soft, yearning way as now: _together?_

The answer to his questions was the same in both, and I whispered _yes_ even as I blinked the memory away. Maybe there were other universes out there, other pathways we didn’t take. Maybe the two of us were always meant to come to a point of question and answer that decided our futures. But that Alex and Richard--they weren’t us. She wasn’t bleeding with the fate of the world in her hands.

But the fate of the world wasn’t the thing I was deciding on now. I’d always had a selfish streak--call it a carryover of my only child syndrome. I could be rash, and I didn’t think things through all the way, especially when it came to relationships. I let my heart lead me to stupid places, and looking at him, I couldn’t help but follow the path it laid before me, even if the rose petals on it were drops of blood.

“I’ve loved you since the first time you insulted me in your office, Richard--even if it was just a little bit then.” A tiny bit, a seed that planted a thorn under my skin, something that always drove me forward to try to impress him, to press myself into the pieces of his life as the cracks revealed themselves to me. “I can’t deny it. But I’m only going to stay if you let me close the door and end this once and for all.”

Richard did touch me then, with his other hand, moving his fingertips just along my hairline. It was a trial of a touch, to see if it still burned, but my skin was quiet and cold in comparison to the warmth of his fingertips. I shivered. “Shock,” he said softly, but he sounded more normal, more like himself when he expressed concern about my wellbeing--once he decided to, anyway. “You’re going into shock, Alex.” There was a beat, then, softly: “Do it.”

Moving his hand from my hair to my waist to support me, I touched my still-bleeding shoulder, dragging my fingertips through the blood. The signs and spells I needed to make came to me without a single though, each one shimmering before the vision into hell grew brighter, locking it piece by piece away from my sight, away from doing whatever the Horn thought might happen if we didn’t stop it.

The heat of the demon’s gaze behind me didn’t even give me pause. Instead, I focused on the warmth at my side and the work in front of me rather than the dizziness in my head, the weakness in my knees, and whatever the hell was happening with Strand’s demon. By the time I was on the last one, Richard was supporting me almost entirely, and I shivered as I sank towards shock from blood loss.

Then I heard the demon’s voice, soft, deep, and slightly detached. “You have brought time, nothing more. We have been here before, and we will be here again. Your bones may be dust, but one will open the door as it has been foretold.”

Then the presence was gone, and Richard stumbled, gasping, to his knees.

The portal wasn’t visible any longer, and I felt it click when I half-fell on top of Richard. I knew was happening, even though I didn’t know how I knew. The demon that had been inside his head for two decades was gone--along with, hopefully, whatever power that the demon had brought along with him, for Richard and for everyone else.

But mine was different. If I didn’t get us out of here soon, then I wouldn’t be able to, and right then, I didn’t think Richard would be up to carrying me. I was well aware of the fact that sooner rather than later, I wasn’t going to be able to stand, but I hadn’t made my decision to close the door only to slowly bleed to death near Thomas Warren’s body and its strange black blood.

The silver light from my blood was starting to fade, and I felt strange, too, like I was losing something other than the blood with the dissipating light. A sense of urgency--no longer apocalyptic, but still pretty damned urgent--filled me, and I reached out for Richard. “We have to go,” I said. My words were too soft, and I felt too out of breath, but when he grabbed my hand, I began to draw sigils into the air with my blood. Ideally, I would have been able to get us to some sort of fancy Swiss hospital with more-than-acceptable levels of care, but this...this wasn’t an ideal story.

Richard Strand and I were never going to be an ideal story. We were just the two of us, here and doing this, two people at the not-quite-end-of-the-world. 

In the end, I got us back to the car. My phone was there still; I had eleven missed calls from Nic. Richard reminded me it was 1414 for an emergency rescue. I wasn’t at all surprised he’d looked that up. Then there was nothing to do but wait, his arm around me as he held his shirt to my shoulder. We’d have to come up with answers for the bullet hole and for Warren and for everything else once they arrived.

But for now? Richard holding onto me was enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, a year later and it's finally finished. If you've made it this far, thanks so much for reading! I also want to thank Jinx for telling me to do the thing and Nerdyvixen for her editing and encouragement. At some point (soonish?) I hope to go back and reedit the rest of this, but for now I'm happy to put it aside.


End file.
